Paulo Dybala listed as ‘day to day’ after thigh injury diagnosis

When Paulo Dybala was seen grabbing at his thigh just a few minutes before halftime in Sunday’s 2-0 Scudetto-clinching win over Sampdoria, it was the collective “Oh crap!” moment that none of us wanted to see happen at any point of the season’s final three games.

We didn’t have to wait long to get the subsequent medical report from Juventus.

Juve announced Monday that Dybala suffered “an elongation of the rectus femoral muscle of the left thigh.” The timetable for Dybala’s recovery has been laid out as “day to day,” which could mean Dybala is in the starting lineup for the season finale against Roma this weekend or it’s going to be a race to get full fitness in time for Juve’s Champions League Round of 16 second leg tie against Lyon.

Also included in Monday’s medical report was news on Danilo, who also had to be subbed out in the first half after a head injury. “Danilo was also subjected to diagnostic tests that were negative,” the statement from Juventus said.

(Seeing as Matthijs de Ligt wasn’t mentioned in any of this, can we assume that he was subbed off due to the fact that he was cramping up rather than there being some kind of muscle injury? I want to think that, and I’m probably going to think along those lines until we hear something different.)

For whatever it’s worth, the Italian press is already predicting that both Dybala and Danilo won’t be playing in Juventus’ trip to Cagliari on Wednesday night. That’s probably not a surprise to anybody reading that previous sentence seeing as the game after clinching the Scudetto has always been one where some of the most squad rotation from one game to the next actually happens.

But as much as Danilo getting healthy will be nice for the sake of actually having some depth at fullback (or at least a little bit), the headliner here was always going to be Dybala’s status and just how long he might be out for knowing there’s an unknown amount of Champions League football to be played after the Serie A finale against Roma. Who knows what “day to day” actually means in this case, but there will certainly be a little more attention turned toward who’s at training over the course of the next two weeks just to see when Dybala is back on the grounds at Continassa with the rest of the group.

Let the countdown to Lyon begin, I guess. And hopefully a match day squad that includes a healthy Paulo Dybala.