Russia also in trouble....
MOSCOW, April 23 (AFP)
Russia's bid to host the 2008 European football championship is under threat as officials of the country's football federation failed to win over government support.
Government representatives consider the idea of hosting the European football extravaganza to be economically non-viable, the Interfax news agency reported Tuesday.
A top official who asked to remain anonymous told the agency that Russia would need to spend around one billion dollars to reconstruct the venues and the facilities in the eight hosting cities in line with UEFA demands.
The source added that Russian Football Union (RFU) bosses failed to supply the government with the calculations of possible profit that the country could obtain as a result of hosting the event in 2008.
"The government just cannot risk such a huge sum of money without any economic analysis," the official said.
The RFU sent European football's governing body UEFA a preliminary bid last year, adding that UEFA president Lenart Johansson had already expressed his approval.
Russia's parliament, the State Duma, also backed the project earlier this year, urging Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov to support a proposal for Russia to stage the 2008 finals.
However, the decision by Russia's government not to support the project effectively dashes RFU hopes of hosting the football festival as the ruling body alone is unable to guarantee that all the necessary facilities for the event can be constructed without major financial support from the government.
At present, Russia has at its disposal just two stadiums which meet UEFA specifications for venues: Luzhniki stadium, where the UEFA Cup final was held in 1999, and the recently-renovated Moscow Lokomotiv's 35,000-seater venue.
