Juventus striker Gonzalo Higuain not called up for Champions League trip to Sevilla

Turns out, Tuttosport was right on the money.

Juventus striker Gonzalo Higuain has officially been ruled out for Tuesday night’s trip to Spain to take on Sevilla in the top-of-the-table Champions League showdown. The 28-year-old will be forced to watch his teammates take on the current Group H leaders due to a thigh injury he picked up against Pescara in Saturday night’s 3-0 win over the relegation battlers.

Here is the explanation, courtesy of Juventus’ official website:

Gonzalo Higuain will not be on the plane to Spain after sustaining bruising to his left thigh in the final minutes of Saturday’s win over Pescara. The forward’s condition will be monitored closely over the coming days. Medhi Benatia, meanwhile, has not yet fully recovered from a knock to his right knee.

So this sucks. This really, really sucks.

Higuain, who has only scored one goal in his last six Serie A games, was expected to start alongside Mario Mandzukic in Juve’s tried and true 3-5-2 before the injury news first came out before training on Monday morning. Then once it became a known fact that Higuain wasn’t even a part of the final training session before Juve left for Spain — the media has the chance to watch the first 15 minutes of training, by the way — then the Tuttosport report became pretty widespread amongst the Italian media outlets.

So now we wait to hear and see what direction Juventus manager Max Allegri will go without the €90 million man available for selection. A host of people are thinking of a trident up top with Alex Sandro and Juan Cuadrado flanking Mandzukic — which seems like a pretty solid option considering how the big Croatian can thrive on service from the wings and in the air.

We’ll see, though. Not that we were looking forward to being in a situation like this to begin with. Again, injuries are so freaking stupid.