La Liga confirms five players of Spanish second division test positive for COVID-19

The Spanish league says five players from clubs in the country’s first and second divisions have tested positive for COVID-19.

They are all without symptoms and will be allowed to start practicing after testing negative in further testing. They will need two negative results to be allowed to come back.

The league has not named the players who tested positive. It also hasn’t disclosed their clubs.

An official statement said: "Specifically, between the LaLiga Santander [first division] and LaLiga SmartBank [second division] clubs, five positive cases have been detected in players, all of them asymptomatic and in the final phase of the disease, whose specific identity La Liga does not know in compliance with the laws on data protection."

Spain this week started loosening some of the lockdown measures that had been in place since mid-March because of the coronavirus pandemic, allowing soccer players to resume



training individually.

Most teams returned to action on Friday, including league leader Barcelona. Atlético Madrid resumed its activities on Saturday and Real Madrid players will be back practicing on Monday.

Spanish media has reported that Atlético Madrid defender Renan Lodi was among the players who tested positive. He did not practice on Saturday.

Meanwhile, Thomas Partey admitted that the first training session of Atletico Madrid post coronavirus break was 'different'.

"It was different," Partey said after the training session. "We suffered a bit at first because we're not used to training and keeping a distance [between each other], but we'll get used to it.

"We're used to being on vacation, training and playing with friends, but we could only stay at home, so it's been difficult. Because of the situation though, we've had to get used to it. We had to keep training at home as much as we could."