September has barely begun and Juventus are already nursing wounds that would test any squad’s depth. Tuesday morning’s Tuttosport brings a sobering three-pronged injury update — one that will define the opening weeks of a season the club approached with such optimism after the summer’s ambitious rebuild.
Yıldız: Surgery Successful, Three Months Out — Target Return November International Break
The Yıldız chapter at least contains a degree of relief. The operation to repair the fracture to the base of the fifth metatarsal of his left foot — performed at the Augsburg Hessingpark Klinik by Dr Martin Jordan, with club doctor Dr Marco Freschi in attendance — was entirely successful. From Tuesday, the Turkish number ten begins his rehabilitation programme.
The timeline is demanding but not catastrophic. Yıldız should be back following the November international break — though returning to 100% condition will realistically require December. As Tuttosport’s Paolo Pirisi notes with quiet precision, he is the one player currently capable of raising Juventus’s quality level from one moment to the next in any given match. Spalletti is waiting with open arms.
Thuram: The Decision Not to Operate in June Has Backfired — Surgery Now Appears Inevitable
The Thuram situation is, if anything, more alarming — and more avoidable. The consultation held on Monday in Lyon with Dr Bertrand Sonnery-Cottet — the knee specialist who operated on both Bremer and Gatti last season — has produced a picture that Tuttosport describes as “quite bleak.” The direction of travel is firmly towards surgery to address the patellofemoral syndrome that has kept the French midfielder sidelined since April and denied him the entirety of pre-season.
The detail that makes this particularly painful is the backstory. Juventus had already recommended surgery to Thuram back in June — identifying the procedure as the most reliable path to a durable resolution. The player, preferring the conservative management route, declined. That decision has, as Tuttosport puts it bluntly, left him “with a fistful of nothing.” The pain has not subsided. The problem has not resolved itself. And now the operation that could have been completed in June — with a summer of recovery behind it — must be performed at the start of the season instead.
Should Thuram go under the knife — and a decision in the coming hours is described as the most likely outcome — the recovery timeline for a knee procedure of this nature would extend the absence considerably beyond what a muscular injury would require. The realistic prospect of not seeing him return until 2027 cannot be dismissed.
Ekhator: Grade Two Semitendinosus Tear — Out for at Least 40 Days
Jeff Ekhator’s radiological examinations, completed on Monday at the J-Medical centre, have confirmed a medium-grade lesion of the semitendinosus muscle in his right thigh. He will be reassessed in two weeks to define the precise recovery timeline with greater accuracy — but the minimum absence is 40 days, meaning he will miss the entirety of September and the opening weeks of October. For a 20-year-old who was signed for €18 million and has yet to play a single competitive minute for the club, the accumulated physical misfortune of his first weeks in Turin is genuinely cruel.
Milik’s Contract Termination: Called Off for Now
The one unexpected consequence of Ekhator’s injury is the reversal of the Milik situation. The Polish striker and Juventus had been in active discussions about a mutual contract termination — a clean conclusion for both parties that would have cleared a wage and a squad slot. With Ekhator now confirmed as a minimum 40-day absence and the attacking department already stretched by David’s departure to Atletico, the numbers simply do not add up. Milik stays — not because of any change in the club’s long-term assessment of his future, but because a squad already full of injury victims cannot afford to remove itself of one more body, however limited his role might be. September has begun. The injury list is already longer than anyone at the Continassa would have wished.
