Beijing, China, April 6, 2020: China’s men's football team has completed a productive training camp in a time made tough by COVID-19, naturalized striker Ai Kesen said on Monday.
The Chinese players, who flew back to China on March 23 from a training camp in Dubai, ended a compulsory two-week quarantine on Monday in Sanya, Hainan province. They were then allowed to return to their clubs, Xinhua News reports.
"Today we ended a training camp of the national team. The past several months have been very hard for all of China," Ai wrote on his Weibo account.
"We have been staying united like a big family, and finished the training well during this difficult period," he said.
The 25-man Chinese squad received two tests for COVID-19 during their isolation in Sanya with no positive results found.
"Now we can go home safely after a 14-day quarantine, and we all go on training at our clubs," Ai said.
The Chinese side kicked off their training camp on March 4 in Dubai. Concerns were raised over their well-being, however, after their teammate Wu Lei, who skipped the training camp and stayed in Spain with his club Espanyol, was confirmed to have tested positive for the novel coronavirus on March 21.
The Chinese team was shaken by the Wu Lei news, an unnamed insider told media.