This archive report was first published on 8 May 2020.
On Friday, May 8, 2020, Italian football giants Inter Milan and AC Milan resumed training in northern Italy, two months after a strict lockdown that had hit the region hard.
Inter Milan announced that all their players and staff had tested negative for coronavirus, clearing the way for individual training sessions to begin in the afternoon.
"All the medical tests that the first team underwent have come back negative," Inter Milan said in a statement.
AC Milan, city rivals of Inter Milan, had resumed training earlier in the week. Club technical director Paolo Maldini warned that not resuming training would be a disaster.
"You have to be careful, but not to resume would be a disaster from all points of view," Maldini said during a live Instagram chat with former Milan teammate Filippo Inzaghi.
The city of Milan in the Lombardy region is the epicentre of Italy's coronavirus outbreak, one of the worst in Europe in terms of deaths and infections.
Since the outbreak first erupted in early March, Lombardy has suffered over 15,000 deaths, around half of Italy's 30,000 coronavirus fatalities.
