Serie A: Three Atalanta players test positive for COVID-19 as club begins pre-season training – Sports News , Firstpost

Rome: Three Atalanta players tested positive for coronavirus on Monday when pre-season training began, the Serie A club announced.

“The players in question are asymptomatic, already in isolation and under the control” of the health authorities, the club said on their website, without naming the players.

Atalanta is based in Bergamo which was one of the Italian cities hit hardest by the coronavirus outbreak earlier this year.

A little less than three weeks after losing their first Champions League quarter-final to Paris Saint-Germain, Atalanta resumed training on Monday without 10 players on international duty and also without Josip Ilicic.

The Slovenian was one of the stars of the first half of a season in which Atalanta finished third, matching their highest ever Serie A finish from the year before.

But Ilicic’s form nosedived when the league restarted and he was omitted from the squad for the Champions League final eight tournament.

The Serie A season is scheduled to kick off on the weekend of 19-20 September.

As Italian clubs have resumed training, they have announced a series of positive tests by players, though all have so far been asymptomatic.

Bologna coach Sinisa Mihajlovic, who is being treated for leukemia, has been placed in isolation for two weeks.

He had just returned from vacations in Sardinia, where many cases have been reported.

The Sardinian club Cagliari announced that four of their players were positive. Cases have also been reported at Roma, Sassuolo, Napoli, Torino and Benevento.