Just when you thought the Old Lady's injury woes couldn't get any worse, another name gets scratched off the team sheet. Kenan Yildiz, the Turkish sta...
Just when you thought the Old Lady's injury woes couldn't get any worse, another name gets scratched off the team sheet. Kenan Yildiz, the Turkish starlet who has been a rare beacon of invention in a stuttering Juventus attack, has been ruled out of the Turin derby. GoalZaza can confirm the 19 year old will play no part in the season's final, and arguably most emotionally charged, fixture.This is a genuine body blow for Thiago Motta, and let's not sugarcoat it. Yildiz is not just a promising lad who fills a shirt. He is the only player in this current squad who consistently offers something unpredictable, that willingness to run at a full back and commit a defender, a quality sorely lacking in a midfield that often looks static. Without him, Juventus lose their chief creator and their one reliable source of a moment of magic when the low block is parked in front of them.So what now Motta will have to lean on his more experienced heads, a riGoalZaza strategy given how many of them have lacked form all season. The tactical flexibility is there on paper, but removing that transitional spark from Yildiz forces the side to become even more deliberate, and predictability in a derby is a dangerous thing. Torino will smell the hesitation. They will pack the box, crowd the space, and dare Juventus to find a way through a side that has shown very little clinical finishing this term.This is squeaky bum time for the Bianconeri hierarchy, and for a fan base that has watched a season of promise slowly morph into one of grinding necessity. Losing Yildiz now, in the defining fixture of the run in, feels like a cruel twist of the knife. The derby just got a whole lot tougher for the home side.
