Simone Inzaghi confirms that he has three options to replace the unavailable Hakan Calhanoglu when Inter host Juventus in the Derby d’Italia in Serie A on Sunday evening.
Calhanoglu has missed the last two matches with an adductor issue, and is also expected to sit out of the Juventus match, but could make his return soon afterwards.
Kristjan Asllani also missed out on the 1-0 victory over Inter in Serie A last weekend, but he has recently returned to training and could be in contention to play against Juve.
With no Calhanoglu or Asllani last time out, it was Nicolo Barella who started in the deep-lying midfield role, although the Italian press thought it was not the most impressive performance he has ever put in.
Both Barella and Asllani are still in contention to start in the ‘Calhanoglu role’ for Inter this weekend though, as is summer signing Piotr Zielinski, Inzaghi confirmed.
Who could replace Calhanoglu for Inter against Juventus
Inzaghi confirmed that one of the three aforementioned players has a slight advantage over the other two, but lots depends on the state of the team’s fitness on the day of the Juventus game.
“We know what Calhanoglu means for us, he’s a world class player,” Inzaghi said during his pre-match press conference on Saturday.
“Asllani is his natural replacement, he brings a certain amount of guarantees if he plays. He’s someone who has improved a lot over the last few years. His bad luck is that he has Hakan in front of him. He had a problem before the Roma game, but he trained for the first time yesterday. It went okay, but we still have to evaluate.
“We also have Barella and Zielinski for that role, I will think about that until tomorrow evening.”
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