A big scare first. Then a return to the pitch for the second half. Francisco Conceição spent several minutes on the ground during Portugal’s Nations League match against Norway on Sunday after taking a strong blow to his left thigh. Today he will be assessed by the Portuguese national team’s medical staff — there is optimism about his condition and no alarm signals have emerged, but a monitoring protocol is nonetheless being applied. For Juventus, watching from the Continassa, the position is unchanged and unchanged from what it has been for weeks: grit your teeth and hope.
A Conspiracy — Eleven Players Injured Since the Season Began
Tuttosport’s Lorenzo Aprile reaches for a word that best captures what has happened to this Juventus squad across the first five weeks of the season. “Una congiura” — a conspiracy. Eleven players have fallen injured since the opening day. A tax that Spalletti has paid with relentless regularity, week after week, losing in the process some of his most important first-team starters. Yıldız, Locatelli, Thuram, Boga, McKennie, Cambiaso — the list of names is a roll call of the players most central to the project, each absence creating a different and specifically painful void.
That the team has somehow accumulated ten points from five Serie A matches and won the Europa League opener 5-0 despite this accumulation of misfortune is the season’s most remarkable and least sufficiently appreciated achievement.
The November International Break — the Turning Point Most Eagerly Awaited
For the long-awaited turn in the injury picture, the November international break is identified as the most likely moment of genuine collective recovery. By that window — which also represents the target date for Yıldız’s return from foot surgery — Spalletti can realistically hope to recover most of the players currently in the treatment room: Ekhator and Boga specifically are flagged as targeting that period. Locatelli, Thuram, and Yıldız remain the longer-term cases — none of the three will be available before November at the absolute earliest, and for Thuram the return extends into 2027.
The second chapter, paywalled under the title “Ekhator-Boga, le condizioni,” maps the precise state of both players’ recoveries and the likelihood of their returning to competitive action ahead of the November window. For now, the key information is as follows: no new alarm on Conceição, cautious optimism from the Portuguese camp, and a season that continues to demand everything from a reduced squad whilst simultaneously asking it to prepare for Cagliari away on 11 October, Celta Vigo in the Europa League on 15 October, and everything that follows.
