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Sovetskaya Square, the historical heart of the city and location of the FIFA World Cup fan fest during the tournament | IDN

Saransk was always a strange choice for a World Cup host city. A small, provincial city of just 300,000 residents with a moderate footballing history? And yet, it was chosen ahead of Yaroslavl and Krasnodar, with larger populations and better football teams. However, things have come together well for the capital of the Mordovian Republic.

During the World Cup, however, Saransk only hosted four matches, with the best of the matches being Japan’s surprise 2-1 win over Colombia. Saransk did, however, host some of the best fans to visit Russia during the tournament, with Iran, Peru and Panama’s fan groups joining the terrific Colombian’s in a trip to the city.

This powerful influx of vibrancy and excitement to a small city really got the Mordovian’s wrapped up in the tournament. The Mordovia Arena’s location just a short walk from the city centre and the FIFA Fan Fest meant there were brilliant scenes of huge scores fans making the walk down the streets toward the stadium, mixing in with locals.

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Stadium Legacy

The Mordovia Arena hosted its first official match in April of 2018, less than two months before the start of the World Cup. The home side, Mordovia Saransk, adopted their current name in 2005 after existing in numerous iterations since 1961. A former Russian Premier Liga side, the first ever match hosted at the stadium was in the Russian third tier, the PFL.

A further two home matches occured before the tournament began, with the final match vs Szyran-2003 attracting 41,000 spectators, a record for the PFL.

After the tournament, Mordovia returned to the stadium, but this time in the Russian second tier, the FNL, following promotion. Early attendances were promising considering the size of the city and the level of football. The season opener in July – just two days after the World Cup Final – attracted 26,000 people. Sadly, that remained the best attendance all season. A poor run, early in the season, meant that just two months later in September, Mordovia attracted only 10,000 spectators. For the final game before the winter break in late November, just 5,000 fans watched their team draw against Tyumen.

Despite the warm weather in Spring, attendance ended up getting even worse. The final game of the season in May, a victory over Baltika Kaliningrad, attracted just over 2,000 fans as Mordovia limped to a poor 12th place finish. According to Stanislav Chudin, the Mordovia Arena saw an average attendance of just 10,670, boosted by the pre-winter numbers. This was the 4th worst of all the World Cup Stadia last season in Russia.

Saransk native Arseniy Nevkin believes that things are not likely to improve in the long term either:

No one needs FC Mordovia at the moment. No one is going to sponsor them, and the head coach will openly say that he will be happy if the club can achieve 10th in the FNL. Bankruptcy and the death of the club looks likely. Mordovia will not have an arena to play on.

The RFU are supplementing the stadium by assigning Russian national team matches to it. Sbornya’s 9-0 victory over San Marino in a Euro 2020 qualifier, this month, was as a sellout. The love for the national team is as high as ever. However, unless Mordovia can achieve promotion to the RPL in the near future, it does seem a gloomy future for the stadium. With the RPL expanding to 18 teams from the 2020/21 season, the chances of promotion have certainly increased.

However, there is a chance for top-flight football in Saransk even next season. RPL new boys FC Tambov have a stadium unfit for the RPL football and will have play their home games elsewhere until it has undergone renovations. The Mordovia Arena is one of the options, and although it would only be a few matches, it would certainly bring in more fans than FNL matches, particularly if it was a big team like Zenit or Spartak.

Time will tell whether the Mordovia Arena will have a lasting legacy. Much will hinge on whether Mordovia can achieve promotion to the Premier League. Russia’s return to the stadium this summer may encourage some fans to return for the 19/20 season to support Mordovia, but another season of low attendances is expected.

The Mordovia Arena hosting second tier football | Cossrad

It is a massive shame that it could go to waste, as the stadium is really magnificent to look at. The local authorities desperately attempted to find other uses for it. It is one of three stadia applying to host the Russian Super Cup, a match which moves every year. Even if they didn’t get it this year, they’ll likely get it in the future. Russian supergroup Leningrad are also being roped in to play a gig in the city, despite initially being left out of their tour schedule.

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Life After Football

Saransk’s choice as a host city for the World Cup raised a lot of eyebrows. A city with a similar population to Coventry or Leicester and, according to legal boundaries, the size of the Isle Of Wight, it was by far the smallest of all the World Cup host cities chosen.

Nevkin told us that while there was scepticism from elsewhere, the locals always had faith:

People did not believe that a city of 300 thousand people would be able to host such a sporting event. The people did not believe, but we did it. It seems to me we did it wonderfully, and at the highest level.

However, what effects could the world’s biggest sporting event have on a tiny, provincial city? Most foreigners have never heard of Saransk, and many would struggle to list it now if asked to name a World Cup 2018 host city.

Like most of the host cities, pre-tournament development produced news infrastructure, including a new airport, better roads, and the ability to pay contactless for things like buses and trams.

Sport wise, a new sports arena, currently being constructed in the centre of the city will be able to host numerous events, including ice hockey. Despite this, the city has a very limited sporting culture, with it’s biggest claim to fame being the Olympic Walking School based in the city, which has produced numerous medallists.

But according to Nevkin, the dust has settled and life has continued as normal.

What happens in Saransk after the World Cup? Everything is just ordinary. The city is being built, LCD’s are being built, it has become a little more popular for actors and singers. Just recently, the first Burger King in the city was opened. The city lives a quiet everyday life.

Tourism in the city was relatively non-existent beforehand, and despite a wonderful cultural background, and picturesque cityscape, things haven’t really changed. However, Nevkin has noticed some smaller changes.

Strangely enough, after the World Cup, the people really took the dictionaries and began to learn other languages. All thanks to the World Cup. We’ve never had that many foreigners in our city. People wanted to talk to them, ask them various questions, learn about life in other countries. But the language barrier prevented this.

In sleepy, central Russia, the whole decision for the selection of Saransk as a host city seemed motivated for the desire to develop a new hub. Another strong city, linking Moscow to the east or the south, but the large scale developments seem to have not sprung up yet.

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The Future

Unfortunately for Saransk, the future looks quite underwhelming when it comes to it’s World Cup legacy. The city seems to be settling back to its pre-tournament state, while the first 12 months for the Mordovia Arena has quickly gone downhill.

Mordovia Saransk’s ultras group are some of the few fans still going to watch their side | Andrey Kondratiev

However, it just takes someone to want to make things happen to change this. After Russia’s victory over San Marino in the recent Euro 2020 qualifier, the head of the Republic of Mordovia, Vladimir Volkov, underlined his desire for Mordovia to return to the RPL.

Talking to press after the match, Volkov spoke of the desire to use homegrown talents to develop football in the city.

We want Mordovia’s squad to be made up mainly of our own players. Two of our graduates now play youth teams for Russia. We need to generate the highest level player and team training. The main focus is on the academy, on the training of our football players. We believe that in two or three years, we will reach the top division and we will be able to play there.

Volkov supplemented this by asking for the RFU to help the Republic with the task to develop football until 2030, by creating a football academy of top standards in Saransk. In the past, this would have seemed like an unlikely request, but the RFU’s willingness to back youth academies seems to be growing.

Just last month, ahead of the San Marino game, Russia’s national side took on FC Chertanovo Moscow in a warm-up match. The fact that this side, who just last year were a third tier club, were chosen for this level of match is a sign that they’re making an impact in the higher echelons of the RFU.

With next year seeing an easier route the RPL through two automatic promotions and two playoffs against the RPL bottom two, it could be a pivotal season for all the FNL sides who currently occupy a World Cup stadium. But for the Mordovia Arena, with it’s dwindling attendances, the quicker that RPL football can be achieved, the better.