MOSCOW -- Russian President Vladimir Putin has promised FIFA that a much-delayed stadium in St. Petersburg will be ready in time to host Confederations Cup and World Cup matches.
The 69,000-seat stadium in St. Petersburg has had repeated problems, including worker deaths, cost rises and technical issues. The field wobbles because of a poorly installed mechanism that allows it to slide in and out of the stadium.
"It's a very lamentable story," Putin told FIFA president Gianni Infantino on Friday at a meeting in the Kremlin, adding "the construction workers promise to fix everything by the end of this year.