After its 2018 World Cup snub, Russia's southern city of Krasnodar is pleading for the national team to play one of their two remaining home 2014 World Cup qualifiers there.
The only city outside Moscow with two teams in the Premier League, Krasnodar was surprisingly left off a list of 11 host cities for the 2018 tournament.
Now, local authorities are using the moral leverage that brought to convince the Russian FA to stage a match next September.
"We will offer Krasnodar as an organizer of one of the matches," said Ivan Peronko, president of the Krasnodar Football Federation, in reference to Luxembourg on September 6 and Israel on September 10.
Krasnodar will host a friendly on November 14 against the United States at the arena of FC Kuban, the Premier League's best-supported side.
"A lot will depend on how we conduct the exhibition game," Peronko said.
A Moscow-based fan club of the national team has already appealed to the Russian FA to play the games in Yekaterinburg, a city that did receive 2018 host status as the home of the national under-21s team and the location for the Russian Cup final.
In its rejection of Krasnodar as a 2018 host, the Russian Sports Ministry argued that the region will receive World Cup games anyway in the Black Sea resort of Sochi.
