The well of misfortune at the Continassa has no bottom. Kamil Grabara’s anterior cruciate ligament rupture in Saturday’s training session is, among all the injuries inflicted on this squad since the summer, the one that carries the heaviest personal and sporting cost. He had barely started: one competitive appearance, one assist, one performance that convinced Spalletti he had found an excellent Vicario alternative. And then, in a single training moment, everything vanished.
The Fourth Operation Since 31 August — and the Third for Sonnery-Cottet
The timeline of Juventus’s medical catastrophe across the past three weeks is extraordinary in its relentlessness. Since 31 August, four players have required surgery: Yıldız, Thuram, Locatelli, and now Grabara. The Polish goalkeeper becomes the third to undergo the procedure at the hands of Professor Bertrand Sonnery-Cottet — the Lyon-based orthopaedic surgeon who has already performed knee operations on Thuram and Locatelli this season, and whose Centre Orthopédique Santy clinic has become an unwanted second home for Juventus.
The current injury list, with Grabara’s addition, makes for devastating reading: Grabara, Ekhator, Boga, Thuram, Yıldız, Locatelli, Cabal, and — after a concerning setback in the past 48 hours on his ankle — Cambiaso, who missed both the NEC match and the Atalanta fixture. Eight players simultaneously unavailable. An ecatombe, as Tuttosport’s Paolo Pirisi characterises it without apparent exaggeration.
Juventus Will Not Exercise the Purchase Option — Grabara Returns to Wolfsburg
The contractual consequence of the injury is straightforward and almost certainly definitive. Grabara arrived on a loan with a purchase option fixed at €11.5 million — a clause that Juventus will not exercise given the medical circumstances. He will return to Wolfsburg at the end of the season after a year entirely spent in rehabilitation. It is, as Pirisi notes, an atroce beffa — the most cruel of ironies — for a goalkeeper who had everything ahead of him and lost it in a training session three weeks into a new chapter.
Pinsoglio Steps Forward — and Radu Is Being Assessed for the Long Term
The immediate practical consequence inside the Continassa is a promotion for Carlo Pinsoglio — the squad’s third goalkeeper and one of the most beloved figures in the dressing room, elevated to de facto backup for the duration of the emergency. Behind Pinsoglio sits Riccardo Radu, class of 2007 and the Next Gen’s first-choice goalkeeper: the club believes significantly in the young Romanian-Italian, and the international break will be used to conduct a thorough assessment of his readiness for a broader role in the first-team environment.
The Free Agent Market — Neto Emerges as the Most Credible Name
Two paths are available to Carnevali and Massara: continue with existing resources until January, when the market reopens with no limitations; or move immediately in the free agent market, where available options are limited but not entirely absent.
The first path is considered more viable in the immediate term — not least because the free agents currently available are, as Tuttosport notes with characteristic honesty, “convincenti al momento poco” — unconvincing for the moment. The most plausible name on the list is Neto: 37 years old, recently departed from Botafogo, previously a respected figure in Italian and Spanish football whose career at Valencia, Fiorentina, and Barcelona spoke to genuine top-level quality. Whether he retains sufficient fitness and sharpness to serve as an adequate Vicario backup is the question Massara must answer.
Sergio Rico — who came agonisingly close to losing his life following a severe horse-riding accident in 2023 and has never returned to his previous level — rounds out a shortlist that the club cannot look upon with any real enthusiasm. January, when the market reopens fully, is the more realistic and more satisfying solution. For the weeks until then, Pinsoglio guards Vicario’s back. The season, already defined by misfortune on a scale this institution has not experienced in living memory, absorbs yet another blow — and prepares to absorb more.
