Lopetegui: LaLiga needs minimum five weeks training before restart

Sevilla coach Julen Lopetegui is experiencing the coronavirus pandemic with resignation and a lot of concern. He said he has lost friends during the crisis and made it clear that football is secondary to everyone's health. 

"I'm not going to give an opinion because I am an interested party," he said. "The circumstances and guarantees have to be in place and then we have to have a certain amount of time. The end of the season is going to be an experiment because we do not know what's going to happen. We have to be calm and wait, giving importance to public health." 

With respect to a return, Lopetegui declared that "what I can assure is this will be nothing like a return after a summer break. Neither the form nor the mind is going to be 20 percent of what it would be in a normal preseason." 

The coached continued: "We are clear on that. I think when the circumstances allow, with the guarantees from the government, a period of adaption will be necessary to preserve the other part of the health, not just the virus. Don't forget that in the Primera and the Segunda, everyone imagines big houses, but it's not the majority. 

"We are all humans, with concerns, there have been cases in teams. All that's going on is not removed from any profession and it affects the players.

"We will have to speak about preparation time but as a manager, I would see we will need a minimum of five weeks to be in a situation where we can play every three days in a setting that no one has experienced before, not just playing behind closed doors, but after everything this nightmare has provoked. We have to be in the best physical condition."