Gonzalo Higuain undergoes successful hand surgery, a ‘50-50’ possibility for Napoli showdown

As is customary about an hour before kickoff, Juventus’ Twitter account sends out the starting lineup for the upcoming match. It was no different before Sunday’s 3-0 win against Crotone. But right after it, we got another tweet that had an interesting piece of Gonzalo Higuain-related information.

The brace on Higuain’s hand might have looked like a club to some. But considering the circumstances, the next piece of Higuain-related news isn’t all that surprising. It’s surgery on said hand, and as we’ve been told it went quite well.

From Juventus’ official website on Monday:

Gonzalo Higuain today underwent surgery on the fractured finger bone in his left hand.

The operation, which lasted approximately 45 minutes and concluded successfully, was carried out by Doctor L. Pegoli, Professor R. Rossi and J Medical staff, in the attendance of Club Doctor, Claudio Rigo, at the Sede Sapientiae di Torino clinic.

Higuain’s return date to team action will be defined over the coming days.

You break a bone in your finger, usually surgery is the next step — and that’s exactly what happened for Mr. Higuain.

The third step following the second step in the process is a pretty easy one to figure out: How long is he going to be out for? Well, we can obviously see above that his status for Friday night’s showdown against Napoli at the San Paolo will probably be determined over the next couple of days.

Juventus director general Beppe Marotta was asked about Higuain at Monday night’s Gran Gala Del Calcio. And he said the following:

“Higuain? There’s a 50 percent chance of seeing him on the pitch against Napoli.”

(Source: Football Italia)

So, I’m pretty that’s what we like to call in the business as a “maybe,” kids.

Maybe Higuain will play. Maybe Higuain won’t play. We don’t know, and maybe Juventus don’t know that, either. Maybe he could show up wearing a huge brace on his hand, maybe he won’t. There’s a whole lot of maybes that we can throw out there now that Marotta has deemed Higuain as a 50 percent chance of playing against Napoli.

The only thing that is for certain in all of this is that Max Allegri is going to be asked about it during his pre-match press conference on Thursday. Maybe then the answers won’t be so maybe-like.