Federico Chiesa out until after Christmas with thigh injury

A week that started poorly on the field in London got one last bit of bad news. And considering the week that Juventus has had, that’s just another hit to what has become quite the disastrous final few days of November.

Juventus announced Sunday that both Federico Chiesa and Weston McKennie underwent exams at J Medical in Turin following their respective substitutions due to injury in Saturday night’s 1-0 loss to Atalanta at Allianz Stadium. While McKennie got some relative good news and is considered day-to-day at this point in time, the same can’t be said for Chiesa, who will miss the rest of the 2021 calendar year and will return at some point after the Christmas holiday with a thigh injury that forced him to be subbed off at halftime.

The statement from the club’s website is as follows:

This morning, Federico Chiesa underwent diagnostic tests at J|Medical, which revealed a low-grade hamstring lesion of the left thigh. His return is expected to be after the Christmas break.

Weston McKennie also underwent diagnostic tests that excluded capsule ligament injuries of the right knee. His condition will be monitored daily.

The Italian press is predicting that McKennie — who has been one of Juve’s few in-form players over the last month or two — will miss Tuesday night’s trip to Salerno at the very minimum, with some heavy squad rotation being predicted following the loss to Atalanta.

But the loss of Chiesa for the next month or so is just the latest hit for a Juventus team that couldn’t afford to lose another one of its best players to injury for an extended period of time. The loss of Danilo has already limited Max Allegri in terms of what he can do with his starting lineup, and the same thing will happen with the loss of Chiesa for the next few weeks heading into the month of December.

Think of it this way: Chiesa, Juve’s best winger, is out due to injury. And Juve’s second-best winger, Juan Cuadrado, is now having to play defense on a full-time basis for the time being because of Danilo’s injury that will keep him out for two months. That’s ... not great — especially knowing what’s going on around the club right now.

The one thing to come out of Chiesa’s injury is that, according to La Gazzetta dello Sport’s Giovanni Albanese, Allegri is expected to temporarily promote young Argentine winger Matias Soule to work exclusively with the senior squad following the 18-year-old appearance for the Under-23 team this weekend, one where he played just 45 minutes. (It was by design, don’t worry.) With Juventus short on wingers, promoting Soule will, at minimum, give Allegri some extra cover heading into December and the final stretch of games before the new year.