Starting Wednesday, Major League Soccer clubs can resume using outdoor training fields for individual player workouts.
All workouts are voluntary and must adhere to safety protocols created in consultation with medical and infectious disease experts, the league announced Friday.
In addition, the workouts must not conflict with policies of local public health and government officials.
Players participating in the workouts will still be prohibited from accessing the team locker rooms, gyms and training rooms. Gyms and training rooms are only accessible by players receiving post-operative or rehabilitation treatment.
Before initiating individual player workouts, each team just submit a plan to the league outlining how it will implement certain healthy and safety protocols.
Those include sanitization and disinfection of the equipment (balls, cones and goals) between sessions; health screening and temperature checks; staggered arrivals and departures with designated parking spaces; use of personal protective equipment from the parking lot to the field; maintaining at least 10 feet between staff and players at all times; and hand-washing and disinfectant stations.
Practice fields must be divided into a maximum of four quadrants, with no more than one player training in each quadrant and no equipment sharing (passing or shooting) between the players.
The ban on small groups and full team training remains in place through May 15.
The 2020 MLS regular season was only two weeks old when the coronavirus pandemic brought a halt to the sports world in mid-March.
–Field Level Media
