Shaanxi basketball team shares rooms with Chang'an Athletic amid epidemic

XI'AN - China's second-tier football club Chang'an Athletic has resumed training in Xi'an's neighboring city Weinan on May 13. Cheng Lei, the club's deputy manager, told Xinhua that the Chinese National Basketball League (NBL) side Shaanxi Wolves helped their players find apartments in Weinan city during the COVID-19 epidemic.

"For safety concerns, we decided to prepare for the upcoming 2020 season in Weinan and tried to avoid commuting between Xi'an and Weinan. Our brother club, Shaanxi Wolves, helped us during the extraordinary days," Cheng said.

Shaanxi Wolves offered 40 rooms to Chang'an Athletic in their training base. It only cost the football club around 80,000 yuan (around $11,250) each day for the footballers' accommodations.

"According to our business contracts, many of them won't come into effect until the league's opening day. We collaborated with the basketball team to save some money," Cheng said.

The COVID-19 situation has eased considerably in China, but the Chinese Football Association has yet to announce the new season schedule of China's second division league and the NBL schedule also remains unknown.

"Both teams may play basketball and football games during these days," Cheng said.

"The basketball players may win the series by their domination in the aggregate score," Cheng added.

As a newly-promoted into Chinese division two, Chang'an Athletic finished the 2019 season sitting 9th of 16 in the table.

Shaanxi Wolves failed to defend its champion title in the 2019 season, taking third place in NBL.