Juventus’ injury situation didn’t get any better on Monday

I sat here a day ago telling you that Juventus’ injury situation heading into Wednesday night’s Champions League group stage matchup against Manchester United is nowhere close to something you’d consider ideal.

It didn’t get any better as we got a day closer to United’s arrival in Turin.

There’s a lot of information to digest after we got our latest injury update from Juventus’ official website and the practice report they have published for the general public:

The Bianconeri are working towards both goals in order to seal qualification on Matchday 4, with two games to go. This morning, the team trained at Continassa to prepare themselves for the fixture. Giorgio Chiellini and Mario Mandzukic both trained with the group, whilst Moise Kean suffered an injury to the left thigh flexors that will be re-evaluated tomorrow. Federico Bernardeschi’s left ankle sprain that was brought to attention during his recovery phase from muscle fatigue will be evaluated in the coming days. Blaise Matuidi has finished his personalised work, aimed at recovering from a bruise on his hip, whilst Joao Cancelo did some differentiated training due to a slight muscle strain on the left thigh flexor. Douglas Costa underwent treatment on a muscle problem related to the adductors of his left thigh.

That might be the longest injury update courtesy of the folks at Juventus’ press services that I’ve ever seen posted on their website. It just goes on ... and on ... and on. It’s 133 words, folks. It’s basically twice as long as Sunday’s injury update — and that was pretty long.

But if we thought things were going to be better 24 hours and another training session later, well, we were greatly mistaken.

So, to recap:

• Giorgio Chiellini and Mario Mandzukic, as kinda expected, returned to full training.
• Moise Kean picked up a left thigh injury in training.
• Federico Bernardeschi, on top of muscle fatigue, now has an injured ankle.
• Blaise Matuidi, who picked up some kind of bruise to his hip in Saturday’s win over Cagliari, trained separately.
• Joao Cancelo, not previously on the injury report, also has a thigh injury.
• Douglas Costa, who had to be subbed off at halftime Saturday, is still working toward regaining full fitness away from the group.

In total, that’s seven players and five of them are dealing with injuries. That worst part of it all is that at least three of them would probably in line for a spot in the starting lineup against Manchester United. Instead, we’re left to wait until Max Allegri’s press conference on Tuesday afternoon to see just how many of those players will actually be available to Il Mister come Wednesday night.

And as you can see, it’s not like a week or two ago when it was just the midfield being hit with injuries. Now it’s all over the field. Good times, good times.