Report: Giorgio Chiellini to miss Juventus’ game against Milan on Friday

Giorgio Chiellini and muscle injuries. They just seem to go together, don’t they? It’s basically been an ever-present kind of issues for what seems like the last two or three years now as the bullish Italian defender has entered his 30s.

So, when you hear that Chiellini is hurt again, are you really surprised?

If you watched Juventus over the weekend, you aren’t. And even if you didn’t watch Juventus struggle in their first Serie A draw of the season over the weekend, you can probably tell where we’re going with this ... and then not be surprised at all.

According to a Sky Italia report on Tuesday evening, Chiellini is set to miss out on AC Milan’s visit to Juventus Stadium on Friday night because of the injury he picked up over the weekend against Udinese. The second part of the report involves his status for Tuesday night’s Champions League showdown against Porto, the second leg of the Round of 16 tie in which Juventus has a 2-0 aggregate lead after the first leg in Portugal. It basically comes down to something that would be described as “maybe” or “potentially” available based on how he progresses over the next few days.

Just what we want to have happen, right? A not-fully-fit Chiellini getting the start against Porto on Tuesday night, feeling something go twang once again and then having to be subbed off for Andrea Barzagli or Daniele Rugani in the 28th minute.

Chiellini had the following words to say about his injury in an interview with Sky on Monday:

“I’ll have tests tomorrow but I’m pretty good. It’s nothing in particular, every now and then I have a few aches and pains from previous battles, but it’s nothing serious.

“Now we’ll see how I recover in the next few days but it’s nothing serious.

“There are always few days, so it’ll need to be evaluated, tomorrow or the day after tomorrow we’ll definitely know something more.

“But it’s not something that will be long-term.”

(Source: Football Italia)

So it’s nothing serious as far as we know right now. But we also know that Chiellini’s body has been an absolute disaster zone in recent seasons and nowhere close to a lock to stay healthy. For all we know he’ll get hurt once again the next time he steps onto the field. That may be against Porto on Tuesday, it may be next weekend. But it seems like it won’t be happening against Milan on Friday night, so I guess we have that going for us.