‘Tepid brekkies, dirty spa & pool full of chemicals’
WELCOME TO YOUR NEW BASE, ENGLAND...
ENGLAND’S World Cup hotel has been slammed for being dirty and for having bad food.
Gareth Southgate’s squad arrives on Tuesday at the isolated ForRestMix Club Hotel in a forest 45 minutes’ drive north of St Petersburg.
Photos show the £104-a-night hotel looking like a prison from the outside and a strip club on the inside, with garish red leather sofas in some rooms.
ForRestMix is in the dull village of Repino, which resembles a building site in parts and has nothing to entertain visitors apart from a wine shop, supermarket and disco.
Locals said “no-one” visits in June because it is still too cold. Highs of only 18C are forecast, meaning the nearby beach and sea are too chilly to enjoy.
Past hotel guests blasted the “chemical” swimming pool and tiny bedroom TVs, saying they are too small to watch.
Critics said the hotel “looked like a prison from the outside”. Another claimed the inside looked “like a strip club.”
But it did get a lot of good reviews too, one happy guest saying: “Lovely place for an overnight stay. Clean, extremely spacious room. Very friendly staff.”
Another, said: “This place is perfectly located and for sure has potential. Very positive, the staff is really friendly and helpful.”
However a German reviewer wrote on TripAdvisor: “Maintenance is below standard. Breakfast is simply tasteless.”
A guest from Russia said: “The spa is dirty.
The swimming pool is poor with lots of chemicals.”
A British expat wrote: “Breakfast seemed to have been cooked an hour before as it was tepid.
“TVs in the rooms were the size of a computer monitor, making them completely unwatchable from the bed.” A Russian reviewer from St Petersburg added: “The swimming pool’s chemicals spoiled our positive impression of the pool. Take upper floor rooms, they are more private.”
There are also fears that five weeks in the remote base will hamper the Russia 2018 hopes of players such as Eric Dier, left. England’s team may suffer once again from boredom, something that has afflicted them in previous tournaments. Locals believe Southgate has missed a trick and should have picked a hotel in vibrant St Petersburg, where players’ WAGs will stay.
Journalist Olga Mordvina said: “No-one goes to Repino unless it’s hot – and it’s not hot yet in June. It’s a quiet village full of trees but not people. England would have been better off staying in St Petersburg, which has lots of activities.”
Boredom due to England’s isolated South Africa 2010 World Cup base was partially blamed for the team’s woeful 4-1 secondround thrashing by Germany.
Just a week after the first game in 2010, Wayne Rooney complained: “Lying in bed at two in the afternoon, that’s quite boring. Breakfast, train, lunch, bed.”
John Terry said at the time: “We finish training and have lunch. It’s six or seven hours until we meet up for dinner again. A bit of boredom kicks in.”
Jermain Defoe recently said: “In South Africa, one night I was bored. Me and Wayne Rooney watched his whole wedding on DVD.”
A manager at the ForRestMix Club Hotel said: “We try to fix issues which guests complain about. But we’re not allowed to say anything more due to Football Association rules.”