It changed not only the perception of Russia abroad, it changed us, we now believe that we can. We can play football well, we can organize events of global importance well.

Alexei Sorokin

Categorized in : World

It changed the perception of Russia abroad, it showed who we are. We showed ourselves as an open, hospitable, welcoming nation.

We can only think and speculate why there was not a huge number, why didn't European nations come in huge numbers to support their teams, but the truth of the matter is that on the way they really got a taste of the World Cup.

You see that we did our best to welcome any fans from any country... by Alexei Sorokin

You see that we did our best to welcome any fans from any country, from any corner of the world.

It's already a great success, we have had lots of positive reactions from the different teams, fans and delegations. It's going well. For now, things are good.

It's good that our team remains in the competition, there is a lo... by Alexei Sorokin

It's good that our team remains in the competition, there is a lot of interest.

We are organizing World Cup 2018 in Russia, whether someone has an attitude towards that or not. World Cup 2018 will be in Russia in 2018, world Cup 2018 was the will of the then deciding body in FIFA... we still think that we had a very good, sound bid. We had a great concept and story to tell and we are implementing World Cup 2018 now.

We don't see it impacting World Cup 2018. Our officials and international officials have stated recently that all issues could be resolved by means of joint efforts, there is nothing tragic going on, nothing irreversible going on. FIFA has its own anti-doping policy, we certainly adhere to that, the CEO also said that even before the attacks on Paris on Friday, World Cup organizers were working on a detailed security plan.

We have not been contacted by a single official, be World Cup 2018 from Switzerland or the U.S. or from any other country.

If there were people who had a clear position on who to vote for it's their right, they are entitled to that. It's their business to make decisions about world football, all I know is we did not know the outcome of the vote until after the vote.

They( the computers) were not destroyed, the truth is they became obsolete and they were naturally discarded.

He has always been a friend of our country, we are certain everything he's doing is for the good of FIFA to which he has dedicated his life.

That is the biggest challenge that we live with, stereotypes, and part of our job is to overcome these stereotypes about Russia. We believe we are doing that.