Miralem Pjanic a doubt for Hellas Verona game after picking up thigh injury in training

For the second time in as many seasons, Miralem Pjanic played a vital role in his current team’s win over his former team at Allianz Stadium, extending Juventus’ win streak over Roma in Turin to an impressive eight straight games. It’s a win that certainly means a little bit more to the Bosnian midfielder, who traded in Roma for Juventus two summers ago.

There is no doubting that Pjanic was great in Juve’s last game before Christmas. However, his status for Juve’s first game after Christmas seems to suddenly be in doubt.

If you are one to keep up with the short recap of daily training sessions on Juventus’ official website, then you were greeted with this paragraph midway through Thursday’s post:

Miralem Pjanic's training session was interrupted due to a muscle strain on the quadriceps of his right thigh, with his condition to be evaluated tomorrow, where the Bianconeri will train in the early afternoon.

Just like that Pjanic went from being a virtual lock to play against Hellas Verona at the Bentegodi on Saturday night to basically disappearing from any of the predicted starting lineups put out there by the Italian press.

We will obviously know more in the coming hours with Juventus holding one final training session early Friday afternoon, and I wouldn’t be surprised if Max Allegri has a form status update regarding Pjanic’s health at his pre-match press conference.

However, the fact that Pjanic had to immediately step away from Thursday’s training session and who Juve’s opponent is this weekend tells me that this is something that won’t be rushed.

Now the only question(s) are this:

• How long, exactly, will this thigh injury keep Pjanic out for?
• Who is going to take his spot in the starting lineup if Allegri rolls with a three-man midfield once again, Claudio Marchisio or Rodrigo Bentancur?

As much as I think it will be Marchisio because he’s so accustomed to playing as a holding midfielder in the center of a three-man crew, I wouldn’t be objecting to Bentancur getting some run at all. That shouldn’t be surprising at all, though.