Olivera suffers muscle tear, cuts short Uruguay camp

Scans have confirmed what Napoli feared: Mathías Olivera has a muscle strain in his right external obturator. The full-back returns on Thursday 8 October, a day earlier than planned, to Castel Volturno, where he will begin rehabilitation with Napoli's medical staff straight away.

The news lands as Allegri is already grappling with a crisis on the flanks: Favasuli has been out for weeks, and Vergara is sidelined with the soleus injury he picked up in Italy's game with Turkey. Olivera had only been listed as "a doubt" for a groin niggle; with Thursday's diagnosis, that doubt becomes a concrete absence Allegri has to plan around, starting with Saturday.

It is not a small detail. To cover that flank, Allegri had already tried Badiashile at left-back in a back four, a role the Frenchman had never played before in his career. That experiment, born as a precaution against a possible absence, now looks close to an enforced choice with Olivera's early return for treatment.

Muscle injuries are not a new theme at Napoli this season, and it is one that has already split opinion in our newsroom: Sosa has pointed to individual recovery methods away from the training pitch, while Auriemma has countered that there were already 37 muscle injuries in the Conte era, proof the issue did not start with this staff. What remains, regardless, is a squad thinning further in exactly the area where the head coach has the fewest alternatives.

Frosinone visit the Maradona on Saturday at 20:45 CET (19:45 UK, 14:45 ET), and Allegri must settle his last doubts over who plays left-back with a reshuffled centre-back and no fit senior full-back. Three days later, Napoli travel to Spain to face Villarreal: the fixture list leaves no time to wait, and the flank crisis is biting at the most awkward point of the season.