With the final chapter of the National Football League's World Qualifying Asian 40 about to be unveiled, the intense final four matchups are about to take place. However, worrying news has come from our team's one rival, the Maldives:
A surprising number of new coronavirus infections have emerged in the list of 33 players in the latest Maldives training squad!
The epidemic situation in the Maldives continues to be severe, and in order to curb the spread of the epidemic, outdoor activities have been strictly limited, and the players can only turn indoors for physical training. For this reason, the hotel has specially vacated the banquet hall to provide a place for the players to conduct soccer activities. According to the plan, the Maldives team will first fly to Dubai, and then at the end of this month, together with the Philippines and Syria teams, they will transfer to Shanghai and head to Suzhou to participate in the Top 40 tournament.
Maldives Epidemic Emergency
Recently, with the intensification of the epidemic in India, the Maldives has become the "refuge resort" of many Indian tycoons and Bollywood stars. According to CNN reports, since the second wave of India's epidemic intensified in mid-March, a number of Bollywood stars have been exposed to leave India, chose to flee to the Maldives for vacation. Including the new generation of Bollywood actress Alia Bukht and so on.
With the spread of the epidemic in India and neighboring countries, the Maldives has also fallen into the most serious wave of the epidemic since its outbreak. The latest data released by the Maldives government's health department shows that within 24 hours from May 19th to 20th, the Maldives new cases of new coronavirus infection amounted to 691 cases, together with 1,503 cases confirmed by previous tests, the cumulative number of new cases on that day amounted to 2,194 cases. Among them, the number of new cases in Male' region was 1,698.
To date, the country, with a population of less than 550,000, has accumulated more than 52,000 confirmed cases and 120 deaths.
The news of a player in the Maldives team contracting the new crown was revealed by the team's Dutch head coach Martin Koopman in an interview with the local media, "We are staying in a very beautiful local hotel in the Maldives. The team can only stay fit indoors. The match (Top 40) will still go on as usual, but the conditions here are really not promising.
We've got a new coronavirus on the team.
Rivals can only prepare indoors amid epidemic
Maldives head coach Koopman further said, "The Maldives Football Association has done everything it can to try and create good conditions and atmosphere for the team to prepare for the match, but the team has not been able to go to the training ground for five weeks now, so you can imagine the condition of the players. After that, we will only go to the training ground when we arrive in China. As a team, as a collective, we have been working hard, but this situation really can't continue. Now, some of the players have had to be shed and our coaching staff has been trying to find a solution to the problem. But from the point of view of preparing for the World Cup and Asian Cup qualifiers, this preparation is just too unsatisfactory."
As seen in the video released by Maldives Football Association president Bassam, the players had to train physically indoors due to the restriction of outdoor activities in the Maldives, for which the hotel vacated the banquet hall to facilitate ball activities for the players. As for technical and tactical training, there is nothing to talk about.
It is worth mentioning that the Chinese Football Association (CFA) has prepared a winning bonus of 12 million yuan for the four matches of the national football team in order to motivate the players to go all out for the victory. One of the bonus distribution programs is that a win over the Maldives will receive 2 million ......
Currently, the Maldives' preparation situation is that the team assembled on May 13th, and almost no training has taken place in the last 3 days. Meanwhile, the team plans to come to China in late May, but the team's travel route may not be a direct flight to China, but first go to Dubai, UAE to change planes, which means that the team's preparations are almost at a standstill.
