Roberto D’Aversa welcomes Gervinho back to the Parma squad amid an injury crisis and confirms he could even start against Sassuolo.
It kicks off on Sunday at 14.00 GMT, click here for a match preview.
The big news is that Gervinho has returned to the squad after his January transfer to Al-Sadd fell through, missing the deadline, and he apologised to his teammates for trying to leave.
Roberto D’Aversa welcomes Gervinho back to the Parma squad amid an injury crisis and confirms he could even start against Sassuolo.
It kicks off on Sunday at 14.00 GMT, click here for a match preview.
The big news is that Gervinho has returned to the squad after his January transfer to Al-Sadd fell through, missing the deadline, and he apologised to his teammates for trying to leave.
“Once a decision is made, you have to wipe the slate clean,” said D’Aversa in his press conference.
“The only thing I need to work out now is whether Gervinho starts tomorrow. What happened is water under the bridge, I can guarantee he took a big step to come back to us.”
Gervinho may well be needed, because the injury crisis keeps going, as Dejan Kulusevski is out yet again after a relapse, joined by Juraj Kucka, with Roberto Inglese, Luigi Sepe, Andrea Adorante, Matteo Scozzarella and Antonino Barillà on the treatment table.
“It has been frankly a strange week. Kucka got hurt in a pre-warm-up, some players had a flu virus, others had toothache. We’ve not been fortunate this season.
“We expect a very difficult game, as Sassuolo are on quite a roll now that they have a full squad to choose from, with a great deal of pace in their ranks. They changed system and found greater balance compared to the last time we faced them.
“I’ve been good friends with Roberto De Zerbi since our days at Monza, so I’m happy that people speak so highly of him as a coach now. We have different ideas of football at times, but we both want to win.”
Parma and D’Aversa were furious last week at the defeat to Lazio, because VAR was not used on a potential penalty incident.
It’s one of the situations that sparked calls for coaches to be given VAR challenges, in the same style as tennis matches.
“I had already said that other sports which use technology can help teach football how to go about it. The referees are under fire, but the issue is usually the lack of clarity in the rules. The referee may well have viewed that again and told us it wasn’t a penalty.”
Parma squad for Sassuolo: Colombi, Corvi, Radu; Bruno Alves, Darmian, Dermaku, Gagliolo, Iacoponi, Laurini, Pezzella, Regini; Brugman, Grassi, Hernani, Kurtic; Caprari, Cornelius, Gervinho, Karamoh, Siligardi, Sprocati