Spain\u2019s Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez on Saturday said he was hopeful that La Liga returns \u201csoon\u201d, after the government began easing coronavirus restrictions.<\/p>\n

Sanchez however said he expected that it would be the leagues and federation that decide when, after the government began easing coronavirus restrictions.<\/p>\n

The sports ministry approved La Liga\u2019s plans on Thursday for clubs to test their players for the coronavirus before they returned to training.<\/p>\n

This has come as the league looks to restart the season in June after it was suspended due to the COVID-19 pandemic.<\/p>\n

Spain, one of Europe\u2019s worst-hit countries with 25,100 deaths, imposed a strict lockdown in March, confining most of the population to their homes.<\/p>\n

Yet after 49 days, they have now allowed people to leave their homes for exercise.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m more of a basketball fan than a football fan, but let\u2019s hope football returns soon,\u201d Sanchez told reporters.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt will be (for) the league and the federation to decide (when they return).<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have started to allow individual training for team sports. Let\u2019s hope it\u2019s soon, but we\u2019ll see it sooner on TV than in the stadium, I\u2019m afraid.\u201d<\/p>\n

Squads will return to training in phases next week, first training individually, then moving to training in small groups and finally to full group training.<\/p>\n

The group training needs to last at least two weeks before the players can return to full competition.<\/p>\n

Spain\u2019s major sports institutions and the government\u2019s department for sports are committed to completing the season. (Reuters\/NAN)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Spain\u2019s Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez on Saturday said he was hopeful that La Liga returns \u201csoon\u201d, after the government began easing coronavirus restrictions. Sanchez however said he expected that it would be the leagues and federation that decide when, after the government began easing coronavirus restrictions. The sports ministry approved La Liga\u2019s plans on Thursday […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":64109,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"gallery","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34,3,43],"tags":[4826,4827,4197],"class_list":["post-64111","post","type-post","status-publish","format-gallery","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-football","category-news","category-sports","tag-laliga","tag-spain","tag-sports","post_format-post-format-gallery"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.metronews.ng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64111","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.metronews.ng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.metronews.ng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.metronews.ng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.metronews.ng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=64111"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.metronews.ng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64111\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.metronews.ng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/64109"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.metronews.ng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64111"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.metronews.ng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64111"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.metronews.ng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64111"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}