The midfielder has a strain, with Gilmour in his place. But it’s not the only package: the Slovakian joins the various Politano, Rrahmani, Buongiorno…
At this point, a trip to a Basilica (Pompeii: 25 km from Maradona) is part of the work plan: possibly to be tackled by car, obviously, to avoid further efforts and not further risk being crippled. Stanislav Lobotka, as one might have guessed, is going to lengthen the list of patients, swell a pretty full infirmary and spread a hint of anxiety around Napoli and even himself: Slovakia, painfully, had to surrender and move on – take, turn – and for the two challenges that await them, in Ireland and against Luxembourg, Calzona will have to invent a new director, the same identical solution that Antonio Conte will have to analyze for his next two, three or four matches, because with a stretch you never know.
intuition
—
And in any case, it went as suspected in the 42nd minute of Napoli-Genoa, when Lobotka sat down on the ground, raised his arm, called for the doctors to intervene and then immediately left the field with them, his face expressing disappointment and perhaps even fear: he had understood, because the body sends out unequivocal messages, that at that moment his match was over and others probably wouldn’t start immediately. With those in the national team, in which he made a leap by regulation and for the first checks on Monday, it will be necessary to add others with Napoli, and it will be clear during the day how many there will be: from Slovakia they are optimistic and also cautious (“Perhaps three weeks could be enough”) but the medicine will offer certainties in the morning and will pass them on to Conte, who knows that he has to face Torino (on 18 October), PSV (on the 21st), Inter (25th), Lecce (28th) and then Como to inaugurate November.
nothing inter
—
Three weeks to tell himself, moment by moment, how he is going, what has changed, how he feels and how many chances he will give himself: and if twenty-one days were necessary, or perhaps indispensable, it is arithmetic to think that Lobotka will return against Fabregas’ Como, not before. But in Castel Volturno we proceed with prudent realism and the very indicative answer will come from the instrumental tests that will be carried out at the Pineta Grande Hospital, a stone’s throw from the sports centre, a health walk one might say.
like a year ago
—
Three hundred and sixty-six days, to find himself melancholy again, with a resigned expression and a sense of frustration that cannot be fought: on 4 November 2024, at the Maradona against Como, Lobotka went out with a more or less similar ailment and missed four matches; a year later, this time with Genoa, a new accident, and a prognosis that seems to be similar to the previous one. Gilmour will play, in the middle of the field, as per the technical characteristics: because having him in the squad, it is not worth inventing a director.
and on the right?
—
It’s not a very happy moment of the season, it’s the way it is now, and this morning the diagnosis and also the all-round prognosis will arrive, in order to allow Conte to find out if and possibly for how long he will have to give up Politano, who also on Sunday ran into problems that have now become recurrent and which he hopes is simply a case of fatigue, of a slight resentment, of something that only takes the national team away from him and nothing else. The championship and the Champions League are calling and an offensive winger who does the clean work and even the dirty work is not given to anyone. But the sensations are the same and there is no need to venture into formal optimism. It is better to turn directly to science to find out more, to understand if the emergency will end up affecting the midfield too or if instead it will only have been a half-baked alarm. And then, in that (cursed) hypothesis, perhaps it will also be time to pray and the walk to Pompeii would become a necessity.
© ALL RIGHTS RESERVED