South Africa international forward Dino Ndlovu has joined his Zhejiang Greentown FC teammates in training as Chinese football readies for a comeback following a delay to the start of the 2020 season due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Arriving in China on March 21 having spent a few weeks at home in South Africa, Ndlovu has begun training with his Chinese League One club after completing a two-week period of quarantine.
During that period, the Bafana Bafana star was training on his own at home in the city of Hangzhou.
China lifted their coronavirus lockdown in March as the country appeared to have contained the pandemic and most football clubs regrouped to carry on with pre-season.
The Chinese football season had been scheduled to start in February but has now been tentatively set to kick off at the end of May or the beginning of June.
“We don’t know yet when the league is going to kick off but we think the beginning of June,” Ndlovu told Times Live.
“My team started training exactly after their lockdown [in mid-March] because when they came back to China from [pre-season camp in] Turkey‚ they went under a 14-day quarantine.
“So it’s been three weeks now since my club started training. So for me, it’s been a few days since I started training with my team. It’s okay and I can’t complain.”
Ndlovu said Zhejiang Greentown have been conducting their training sessions in a cautious way to avoid the spread of the coronavirus.
“Look‚ no one in our team has the virus and we train as per normal. The playing and non-playing staff are tested after every seven days,” said Ndlovu
“Training sessions are the same. We don’t do social distancing. The only thing we do is basic pre-cautionary steps that are implemented within the training base.”
Former Zimbabwe international forward Nyasha Mushekwi is Ndlovu’s clubmate and has also started training with the rest of the team.
