Napoli go to Juventus with four defenders out and Lobotka in doubt

Napoli have had more than 30 diagnoses this season, from meniscus surgery to a hernia. Neres, Badiashile and Spinazzola all miss the trip to Turin on Sunday 1 November, and the club has yet to explain why the muscle injuries keep coming back.

by Gennaro SanninoThursday 29 October, 19:15 CET· 2 hours ago

Più di trenta diagnosi e una caviglia ancora senza data: il Napoli va dalla Juventus con mezza difesa in infermeria — Grafica Arena Napoli

Meniscus surgery. A torn adductor. Pubalgia. A broken metatarsal. A broken hand. Acute Achilles tendinopathy. A high-grade tear of the rectus femoris. An inguinal hernia. The list goes on for more than 30 entries.

Lay out every diagnosis Napoli have had this season and it does not read like a football club's medical file. It reads like the syllabus of an orthopaedics course. It is not a curiosity, either. It explains part of Napoli's October.

The latest name on it is Lobotka's. He was carried off on a stretcher after 17 minutes at Monza. The club announced a contusion and sprain to his left ankle and gave no recovery time. Landucci did not play it down.

"We fear we've lost him for a while."

Lobotka is a doubt for Juventus. In Turin, the first problem is finding someone to run the midfield.

The defence is hit hardest

The heaviest toll is at the back. Napoli have ten defenders in the squad and four of them are out. Buongiorno has had meniscus surgery and will not be back until January. Badiashile, on loan from Chelsea, has a moderate strain to his right rectus femoris. He broke down again early in the second half of the 3-3 draw with Roma. Spinazzola has a low-grade tear in his right hamstring, and Favasuli is expected back for Torino on 21 November.

That leaves Landucci with Rrahmani, Rafa Marín, Olivera, Di Lorenzo, Beukema and Marianucci. Di Lorenzo is also still carrying a knee contusion from the Bodø/Glimt game. Napoli have already conceded 11 goals in 9 league matches, so none of this is a small detail.

One number shows how much a full squad matters. With Rrahmani on the pitch, Napoli concede between 0.69 and 0.72 goals a game. Without him, the figure is about 1.7. He missed the Roma game with flu, and it finished 3-3. An absent defender does not just shift a statistic. It changes results.

Things are no better in attack. Neres has a tear in his right semimembranosus, one of the hamstring muscles. He misses Juventus and Porto and should return against Lazio on 8 November. Since the summer of 2024 he has made 61 appearances and had eight injuries in three seasons. Alisson Santos is expected back for Sassuolo on 29 November. McTominay missed all of September with an arrhythmia. Vergara only returned to training on Wednesday 28 October, after the problem he picked up with the national team against Turkey.

Bad luck, or something else

Supporters are asking this quietly, and it needs asking out loud: is it just bad luck? A fracture or a knock is nobody's fault. Muscle injuries that recur, relapses, players who break down "again" are a different matter. The club has offered no explanation so far, and that silence weighs as much as the diagnoses.

Whoever builds the squad also has a choice to answer for. Signing players with an injury record like Neres's means accepting that they will spend part of the season in the treatment room.

Napoli are seventh on 14 points, six behind fourth-placed Como, and are unbeaten in three. The 4-1 win at Monza showed that even a short squad can hurt teams. It also showed how much this side gives away at the back: 12 shots and 5 on target, against a team that had 7 points.

At 20:45 CET (19:45 UK, 14:45 ET) on Sunday 1 November at the Allianz Stadium, Landucci has to build a midfield and a defence from whoever is left. Porto follow on Wednesday 4 November, then Lazio at the Maradona on 8 November.

Until then, every training session is one more risk.