As Nicolo Savona walked to toward the Juventus bench after being subbed off in the 66th minute of Wednesday night’s scoreless draw with Aston Villa, there was certainly a “here we go again” kind of feeling. That’s just the natural first reaction you should have when we are in the midst of one of Juventus’ biggest roster crunches in a few years.
There was, however, a bit optimism coming out of the trip to England that Savona’s removal resulted in nothing major rather than ... well, what we feared at first glance.
The next day, we got the medical scans that Juve manager Thiago Motta said would take place, and thankfully that initial bit of hope was the right path to take. Although, like we’ve seen with Dusan Vlahovic, just because nothing serious has been found, that doesn’t totally mean Savona is clear of any potential missed time.
Juventus announced Thursday that Savona has been cleared on any sort of injury after he was forced off against Aston Villa due to feeling discomfort in his right adductor. Like with Vlahovic’s situation in which he picked up a minor muscle injury during the November internaitonal break, Savona now enters the day-to-day zone in which Juve has been writing a lot lately when it come to injuries: “his condition will be assessed in the coming days.”
That could mean he’s available to face Lecce on Sunday night. Or, if he isn’t, his potential absence will put even further strain on Juventus’ injury situation that currently saw eight players miss out against Aston Villa, with just four outfield players available off the bench.
If Savona is out of action this weekend, that would mean the only outfield players Motta would have available to him off the bench would likely be the trio of: Jonas Rouhi, Nicolo Fagioli and Samuel Mbangula. That’s just even wild to consider even though Juventus just played a Champions League game with just four outfield players on the bench, but the only hope that Savona can recover in time so that the injury situation doesn’t officially get worse than it already is.
Because, honestly, we deserve some actual good injury news rather than just about everything that we’ve been seeing for much of the last couple of weeks, if not longer than that.