Juventus midfielder Claudio Marchisio's status for Derby della Mole still uncertain

As is relatively easy to figure out by now, Juventus is a different kind of team with Claudio Marchisio in the lineup compared to when he's forced to sit out. The latest example of that came when Marchisio was forced to miss Wednesday night's loss at Sassuolo, a game where Juve's midfield looked out of its element without their most valuable player not amongst the starting players.

A day after Juve's fourth loss of the season, Marchisio's status for the Turin derby is still relatively unknown.

In their daily wrap up of the day's events, Juventus announced that Marchisio did not take part in training on Thursday afternoon, thus creating plenty of doubt as to whether he will actually be healthy enough to play against Torino just 48 hours later. That was followed by a report courtesy of TuttoJuve stating that Marchisio is still a doubt for the first Derby della Mole of the season thanks to the illness that kept him out of the Sassuolo match.

If there ever was a worse time for Marchisio miss action for a non-injury reason like, you know, getting sick, then this would be it. Obviously coming down with the flu is out of his control, too, but with the way Juventus is playing these days, they need all the help they can get to try and right all of their current wrongs. And, as we've come to find out, the absence of Marchisio is even that much more magnified when Juve don't have their No. 8 in the lineup.

It was as clear as day despite all the rain at the Mapei Stadium two days ago. Playing without Marchisio and Sami Khedira proved to be one of Max Allegri's biggest faults against Sassuolo. Juventus' three starting central midfielders — all of which were 22 years old, by the way — struggled to impose and kind of will on the game. And thus, the need for Marchisio and/or Khedira even became that much more clear as the minutes ticked off the clock.

I guess the only hope is that Marchisio can recover from this flu bug as fast as humanly possible. We all know the only Turin-born player on the Juventus roster sure does like playing against the club his wife just so happens to have rooted for growing up.