If you watched any portion of Juventus loss to Como over the weekend, you would have noticed that Kenan Yildiz was hacked at by opposing players — a lot. Some were called fouls, others weren’t, but either way Como players who had the task of trying to slow down Yildiz were doing just that by being just about as physical as any team has been with the young Turkish No. 10 this season.
The result of that was that Yildiz was hurting — and a little bit more than usual somebody like him might be after a regular
game.
Yildiz didn’t participate in Sunday’s recovery session at Continassa alongside his teammates due to a bruised calf, according to reports from IlBianconero.com and La Gazzetta dello Sport. That might not be a huge deal at other points in the season, but considering the fact that Juventus have not won in the month of February and there’s now only three days to go before the second leg of the Bianconeri’s Champions League play-off round tie against Galatasaray and a huge game against Roma a few days after that on the first day of March and you’ve got Luciano Spalletti’s most important attacking player now a bit of a doubt for at least the midweek fixture.
Gazzetta added that Spalletti’s decision to sub out Yildiz late in the loss to Como was directly a result of a precautionary measure to try and prevent the contusion from becoming more of an issue than it already was.
A reason that it’s not much of a problem is the fact that Yildiz didn’t necessarily go straight for J Medical come Sunday morning and get tests like we’ve seen following other players having to be taken off due to potential injuries, most notably Gleison Bremer following the first leg against Galatasaray last week.
Gazzetta said that the hope is that Yildiz will be available to face the Turkish giants on Wednesday night’s second leg at the Allianz Stadium. However, at this point, it’s hard to truly know how Spalletti might play things considering the 5-2 deficit Juve face after the first leg and how the matchup against Roma four days later might take on even more importance than trying to pull off a minor miracle considering Juve’s now four points off a Champions League qualification place in the Serie A standings.
