German football teams started the week in isolation on Monday after going into seven-day quarantine ahead of the Bundesliga season restart on Saturday, with club bosses saying completing the campaign amid the coronavirus outbreak will not be easy.

The German Football League (DFL) decided last week to resume the first and second divisions from May 16 after a two-month suspension, making it the first major sports league to attempt a restart.

Teams have been sent into mandatory seven-day isolation after testing for the virus to reduce the risk of infection before playing in empty stadiums with only a handful of staff and officials, to help prevent the spread of the virus.

Several clubs, including champions Bayern Munich, Borussia Dortmund and VfL Wolfsburg, have picked hotels in their cities to cut travel times to training locations and airports for the weekend matches.

Others like Schalke 04, who face Dortmund in the Ruhr Valley Derby, and Borussia Moenchengladbach are using hotels at their stadiums.

Bayer Leverkusen and Union Berlin have moved to more isolated hotels in the countryside, as have bottom club Paderborn who will spend the week in a nearby thermal springs town.

Players and staff wore face masks as they departed for hotels where distance between tables at team lunches and dinners will become routine, as will single rooms where players will make their own beds to reduce unnecessary contact with other people.

David Alaba said Bayern are “hungry” and enjoying their return to full-team training. “It was really very, very nice to be back on the pitch, training as a whole team,” said Alaba.

“You could tell how much we have all looked forward to this moment. You could feel that in training, everyone was hungry and looking forward to the first game,” he added.

Plans to restart, however, suffered a setback on Saturday after the entire team of second tier Dynamo Dresden was placed in two-week quarantine following two positive Covid-19 tests. “We always expected that the remainder of this season will not be trouble-free,” Borussia Dortmund chief executive Hans-Joachim Watzke told the Funke media group.

The league, desperate to complete the season by June 30, has drawn up a detailed set of regulations for training and matches, including stringent testing that helped it get the government’s green light to restart.

Meanwhile, the men’s German Cup final has been rescheduled for July 4, the German football association (DFB) said.