Report: Juventus midfielder Claudio Marchisio still on track for late-October return

Even before the summer months arrived, we were awaiting the return of Claudio Marchisio to the Juventus lineup. So many of the discussion surrounding Juve’s midfield involved the caveat of something like, “Yeah, well when Marchisio returns...” It’s unavoidable considering who or what the subject of conversation involved.

Soon, like basically in-a-month kind of soon, Marchisio will be back around. Yes, just as planned, Marchisio will be back.

According to a report from La Gazzetta dello Sport on Wednesday, we are coming to the end of not having Marchisio in our lives. Marchisio, who tore his ACL against Palermo this past April, is still on track to return to Juventus’ lineup “by the end of October” like was originally laid out after he suffered the major knee injury that just about every athlete no matter the sport wants to avoid.

Marchisio, so vital to Juventus’ midfield, has recently returned to full training in the past two weeks.

The good thing in all of this is that we do have Marchisio updates now. Before, we were basically left to check the days off the calendar and wait to make sure the timetable laid out when he first heard his ACL go pop back in April. Now, we have visual evidence of Marchisio training with the main unit instead of just relying on Instagram posts to see what Claudio was up to on a daily basis.

For as honorable of a job as both Mario Lemina and Hernanes have done in Marchisio’s absence to open the 2016-17 season, everybody’s favorite Turin native has proven to be arguably the most important midfielder Juventus has. You can’t just replace that kind of production, that kind of responsibility overnight.

And as the Gazzetta points out, the return of Marchisio means that Max Allegri will have more options when it comes to potential switching to a four-man backline. Ah, the days of 4-3-we’ll see may just be back when Marchisio comes back. How fitting.