OFFICIALLY OFFICIAL: Nicolo Fagioli to undergo season-ending collarbone surgery

As Nicolo Fagioli hit the turf Thursday night and the 10s upon 10s of seconds went by without him getting up, you got the feeling it wasn’t good. Fagioli, Juventus’ 22-year-old midfielder who has taken his playing time opportunity and run with it this season, laid on the Estadio Ramon Sanchez-Pizjuan for more than a few minutes as he received treatment and the training staff signaled for a substitution to take place.

It didn’t take long after Fagioli was stretchered off for the reports to come out that he had suffered some kind of collarbone injury.

Less than 18 hours later, we got official word.

Fagioli’s 2022-23 season has come to an end three games early after he broke his collarbone in Thursday night’s loss to Sevilla in the Europa League semifinal, the club announced Friday. Juventus wasted little time when it came to Fagioli getting surgery to repair the injury that was suffered after he was absolutely crashed into by Sevilla’s Nemanja Gudelj late in the first half of Thursday’s decisive second leg in Seville. In Juventus’ short announcement, it was noted that Fagioli was set to undergo further examination Friday before undergoing surgery to repair his injury on Saturday.

There was no timetable laid out for Fagioli’s return and how, if at all, it might impact his return to the squad when preseason training starts up in July.

Fagioli posted a pair of brief messages on Instagram after news came out that he would need surgery to repair his collarbone injury, thanking fans for their messages of encouragement and stating how he can’t wait to get back on the field following this injury setback.

The sudden end to Fagioli’s first season with the Juventus big squad puts a damper on what has truly been one of the handful of individual bright spots we’ve seen this year. As much as he barely featured the first two months of the season, Fagioli took his opportunity to get into the starting lineup due to injuries up and down the midfield depth chart and ran with it. While he had his moments of disappointment — which sometimes resulted in a little bit of emotion being shown — the Juve youth product showed that he is certainly a player for the present and future at the same time.

With the injury, Fagioli also won’t have a chance to be included in Italy’s squad for the Nations League semifinal against Spain in June.

In a total of 35 appearances in all competitions, Fagioli scored three goals and recorded four assists. he also made wearing the No. 44 look pretty cool at the same time.