Andrea Pirlo suffers knee ligament damage, will likely be out for at least a month

The news nobody who roots for Juventus wanted to hear regarding the health of Andrea Pirlo is the news that was released after the 34-year-old midfielder underwent tests on Monday afternoon.

Courtesy of Juventus' official website:

Andrea Pirlo, who picked up a knock not long after kick-off in yesterday's fixture between Juventus and Udinese, has undergone medical tests this afternoon.

The examinations at Turin's Fornaca Clinic have revealed second-grade damage to the medial collateral ligament of his right knee.

Welp. Seeing a sentence that includes "second-grade damage" and "ligament of his right knee" almost immediately following one another makes me squirm a little bit more than it probably should.

Seeing as there's no timetable given for Pirlo's injury, there's a whole lot of speculation going on about how long exactly the bearded wonder will be out for. I don't claim to be a doctor and will never do so, but the common line of thinking says that Pirlo will be out until January 2014 at the very least.

The question now is what Antonio Conte will do to try and replace Pirlo. Obviously the midfield three will be the MVP combination of Claudio Marchisio, Paul Pogba and Arturo Vidal, but where exactly they'll be placed is still to be determined. Or maybe Conte already knows. He's a smart guy, you know.

We'll see, though — and hope that Pirlo comes back in the quickest amount of time he possibly can.