Juventus lose Dusan Vlahovic for three months with ‘high grade’ adductor injury

We knew there wasn’t going to be good news on the way with how Dusan Vlahovic reacted to his injury in the first half of Saturday night’s win over Cagliari. The 25-year-old striker was in pain, requested a sub almost immediately and had his face in his jersey as he expressed his displeasure in the seconds and minutes following the initial twinge he felt.

The news has come in after Vlahovic visited J Medical on Monday.

And guess what? It isn’t good — at all.

Juventus have announced that Vlahovic has suffered “a high-grade injury” to his adductor and that “further medical consultations will be necessary to determine the most appropriate treatment.” What is missing is how long Vlahovic will be out for, according to the club. But most in the Italian media believe that Vlahovic is likely looking at two or three months on the sidelines due to the injury he picked up this past weekend.

Here is the official medical update after Vlahovic underwent his scans at J Medical.

Following the muscle problem he suffered during the Juventus Men’s First Team match against Cagliari, Dusan Vlahovic underwent further radiological examinations at J|medical this morning.

The tests revealed a high-grade injury to the muscle-tendon junction of the left adductor longus.

Further medical consultations will be necessary to determine the most appropriate treatment.

At his pre-match press conference ahead of Juventus’ Coppa Italia opener against Udinese, Juve manager Luciano Spalletti confirmed that it will be a while before we see Vlahovic on the field again:

“Vlahovic? The doctors will determine how long Dusan needs to recover before he can return to action. My feeling is that it will take two to three months to see him back on the pitch. I would have preferred to have him available because he was very focused and very much part of the team.

Well, that’s not good. The fact that it could be more than two or three months feels like a possibility. But at this point, speculating that Vlahovic won’t even be back until the final stretch of the 2025-26 just feels a little too much like armchair doctors and trainers taking over, so we’ll leave that to Juve’s training staff.

No matter if it’s two, three or even four months, Juventus being without their clear-cut best option at the No. 9 position knowing that it’s a big month of December (and then January and February) both domestically and in Europe is the kind of development that this team just didn’t need knowing that it’s got plenty of other issues.

After both players scored in the comeback win over Bodø/Glimt last week, the pressure now clearly falls onto the shoulders of Jonathan David and Loïs Openda for goal scoring production up front. Who knows if Spalletti has a preference between the two at this point considering he has relied so much on Vlahovic since he was hired to replace Igor Tudor in late October. But both of them will get much more game time now compared to the first three months of the season now with Vlahovic out for an extended period of time.

Vlahovic is Juventus’ leading goal scorer across all competitions this season with six goals.