How Juvenus could line up against Verona

9:30am on Friday 26th February 2021
By Martin Macdonald

Juventus will take on Hellas Verona in Serie A on Saturday while going through an injury crisis of sorts.

Head coach Andrea Pirlo will be forced to field a makeshift team as the Bianconeri continue to fight to regain ground on Milan in second and Inter in first.

Wojciech Szczesny should return in goal despite Gianluigi Buffon keeping a clean sheet in the previous game - a 3-0 victory against Crotone.

The number of personnel issues in defence may force Pirlo to revert to a back three of Matthijs de Ligt, Merih Demiral and Alex Sandro.

Leonardo Bonucci, Giorgio Chiellini, and Juan Cuadrado are all injured, while Danilo is suspended after accumulating too many yellow cards.

The only other options would be to bring in a youth player to feature at right-back, or one of Radu Dragusin and Gianluca Frabotta, but the former is a central defender while the latter is a left-back.

Things get a little better for Juventus in the midfield area as the only absentee at the moment is Arthur.

That should allow Pirlo to field a midfield five of Federico Chiesa, Adrien Rabiot, Rodrigo Bentancur, Aaron Ramsey, and Weston McKennie.

Federico Bernadeschi is also available.

In attack Dejan Kulusevski will partner Cristiano Ronaldo as Paulo Dybala and Alvaro Morata are set to be absent.

Dybala is reportedly on the road to recovery, though, so It might not be long before the Argentine is back playing for the Old Lady again.