RPL stadiums: Ekaterinburg Arena

On 15 April 2018, the official opening ceremony of the reconstructed Centralniy Stadium in Ekaterinburg took place.

Home of cyclists, hockey players, and football players

The first building on the site of the arena was a velodrome, which opened in 1900. Soon three football fields were laid there and since 1913 they have held the city's championship matches. In 1925, the velodrome was demolished, and three years later it was replaced by the regional stadium named after Vladimir Lenin with wooden stands for five thousand people.

In the 1950s, the fire department found them not to meet safety requirements, and the arena was rebuilt. The new 27,000-seater stadium, named ‘Centralniy’, opened in 1957. In addition to Uralmash football matches, it hosted games of SKA-Sverdlovsk, the 11-time Soviet bandy champions, and speed skating competitions.

The next major reconstruction came half a century later, between 2006 to 2011. In 2015, it began preparing for the World Cup and was renamed the Ekaterinburg Arena for this tournament. On 1 April 2018, FC Ural played a league match with Rubin Kazan 1-1 at the renovated stadium, and two weeks later, on the official opening day, they beat Spartak Moscow.

Most memorable RPL match: FC Ural 2-1 Spartak (15 April 2018)

This was the first FC Ural victory at the Ekaterinburg Arena and the most attended RPL home match with 26,868 spectators. The hosts took the lead in the first half after a goal by Erik Bicfalvi, and at the end of normal time Othman El Kabir secured the win. All the visitors could manage to do was pull back one goal in added time through Quincy Promes.

This was the end of Spartak's 18-match unbeaten run in the championship, which had lasted since August 2017. The following season, FC Ural claimed another significant victory at home over the Red and Whites to reach the semi-finals of the Russian Cup. Incidentally, the stadium hosted the Russian Cup final in 2012 when Rubin beat Dynamo Moscow 1-0.

Later, the Russian youth team played three matches of Euro 2013 qualification at the Ekaterinburg Arena. The main one was the return play-off game with the Czech Republic. After a 2-0 away win, Nikolay Pisarev's team drew 2-2 in front of 20,000 spectators and advanced to the finals.

On the Centralniy pitch that day, Fedor Smolov and Yuriy Kirillov scored against the Czechs. Both later played in Ekaterinburg as FC Ural players, although throughout Smolov’s fruitful loan spell the club split their games between the SKB Bank Arena and Tyumen’s Geolog Stadium while the Centralniy was reconstructed.

Most memorable 2018 World Cup match: Japan 2-2 Senegal

Ekaterinburg Arena hosted four group-stage matches during the 2018 World Cup. Here, Kylian Mbappe scored his first goal of the tournament against Peru, while Mexico's Jesus Gallardo, playing against Sweden, received the fastest yellow card in World Cup history after just 15 seconds.

The meeting between the Japanese and Senegalese was very productive. Sadio Mane and Moussa Vage put the Africans ahead twice, while Takashi Inui and Keisuke Honda took turns equalising. But the main characters of the match were the Japanese fans: they stayed behind in the arena to clear up the rubbish.

"Our stadium is in my top 3 favorites"

According to the President of FC Ural, Grigoriy Ivanov, an important advantage of Ekaterinburg Arena after its reconstruction is that the stands are covered with a roof. "The most important thing is that now fans will watch football in comfort. We will no longer be afraid of precipitation. At Uralmash, the three stands did not match the comfort level. Now you will not need to sit with umbrellas," the head of the club said, talking to the press before the first test match.

Later, the team's winger El Kabir called the home stadium one of the best ones to play in. "It is in my top 3 favorite stadiums. The arena is very beautiful. The stadium looks Russian from the outside, but inside everything is very modern. The pitch is good. We are happy to play home games there."

Erik Bicfalvi, who has scored many goals at the Ekaterinburg Arena, likes that the stadium is purely for football. "There is no running track, the fans sit close to the field, like in England, and thanks to this, we feel comfortable,” said the Romanian midfielder. “For us, the feeling of intimacy with the fans is the most important thing. I also like how the stadium was made outside, how its historical part with statues was preserved and completed with the help of modern technology. This combination of old and new styles looks very nice.

“My favorite place in the stadium is any place where we celebrate goals in front of the fans. Of course, I will also highlight our dressing room: it is very modern, spacious, and everything is made for the players there. There is even a special place for warming up. There are a lot of good stadiums in Russia now thanks to the World Cup, and what is important is that they are all new.

“For us, moving from the SKB-Bank Arena to the Ekaterinburg Arena was a big step forward. Since I am currently playing for FC Ural, this stadium is undoubtedly one of my favorites.

The most memorable match was the victory over Spartak in 2018, because it was officially the first game at the arena. We played well and won - everything you need for the grand opening."

"The stadium was one of the best in the USSR”

El-Kabir's words about the ‘Russian’ appearance of the stadium refer to the facade, built during the reconstruction in the 1950s. Six sculptures were installed, four of which depicted athletes: a biathlete, a skier, a girl with a torch (she used to hold a paddle) and a football player.

Preserving this historical view was a serious task that was solved by the architect Dmitry Bush during the arena’s preparation for the 2018 World Cup. In the early 2000s, he participated in the construction of another RPL stadium; the Lokomotiv in Moscow, now known as the RZD Arena.

"The walls built between 1953-1957 are worthy of preservation and restoration," Bush told E1.RU in October 2014, a few months before reconstruction began. “During our work, we have encountered a lot of stadiums, as well as the construction and reconstruction in different Russian cities. We are only now designing about five stadiums. And the stadium in Ekaterinburg – in the form in which it was built in the 50s - was one of the best in the Soviet Union.

“Only the [Kirov] stadium in St. Petersburg, which was built in those years, could compare with it. In my opinion, the Luzhniki is already worse in architecture and is less interesting. Therefore, the historical walls, the object of protection of the cultural heritage, their very architecture with sculptures wielding cutlasses must be preserved."