Completion of World Cup stadium behind schedule

FIFA says a World Cup stadium in the Russian city of Samara requires “a huge amount of work” to be ready on time.

With less than three months to go until the World Cup, the 45,000seat Samara Arena is the only one of 12 stadiums which doesn’t yet have a field installed. Cold weather in the Russian spring is holding up the installation.

FIFA chief competitions official Colin Smith says “obviously we would expect further progress than this,” adding that “there’s a huge amount of work still to be done” for the stadium to be completed by the end of April.

— The Associated Press