Giorgio Chiellini is injured again

On Thursday morning and into the early afternoon, Juventus had a small group of fans — around about 500 total — assembled at Juventus Training Center to watch an open training session. By all accounts, it seemed like a very exuberant and happy hour or two of training, with the club’s official website doing its very best to hype up the day’s happenings.

Let us read the second paragraph of the training session recap on juventus.com:

More than five hundred spectators, guests of Juventus (among them, mostly Juventus Members and fans of the Official Fan Club), who, with applause, a smile and a photo with Jay attended the team’s session. Leonardo Bonucci took part in the session, that kicked off with an athletic and technical warm-up, before a mini tournament divided into four formations was played right under their eyes. Chiellini had muscle discomfort in his left calf.

Wait, wait, wait ...

I thought this was supposed to be all happy?!

That last sentence does not match the previous two. But, based on how the last couple of months have gone, I guess we shouldn’t be surprised that another Juventus player is injured — especially one that just returned from injury and has a lengthy injury past when it comes to muscle strains and pains and everything in between.

This, of course, probably rules Chiellini out for this weekend’s home finale and Scudetto celebration against Atalanta, which will be trying to score about 100 goals after their midweek disappointment in the Coppa Italia final. And judging by what Juve’s injury list has looked like in recent weeks, it’s certainly going to be a makeshift kind of backline on Sunday because that’s exactly what we want to see happen against clubs that are playing for a top 4 kind of finish.

So, there’s that. As much as people got selfies with Jay and are happy about it, I’m once again wondering about Giorgio Chiellini’s calf muscle. This is not new. We’ve been down this road before. But, with Chiellini only getting older, it’s pretty much what we’ve come to know as the 2018-19 season comes to an end.