Fiorentina boss Vincenzo Italiano is facing a defensive crisis ahead of their game against AC Milan after the international break, a report has revealed.
Calciomercato.com reports how Italiano must now deal with a double suspension as both starting centre-backs Lucas Martinez Quarta and Nikola Milenkovic picked up a ban, the latter for a straight red card too. That means La Viola are down to just two central defenders, Nastasic and Igor, but the problems go further than that.
The Serbian national team have called up Nastasic together with Milenkovic and Terzic, while Argentina have summoned Quarta and the Italian national team have called Biraghi. The result is that up until Tuesday 16 November, Italiano will only be able to work with two right-backs – Odriozola and Venuti – and the centre-back Igor.
Until the internationals return, the ex-Spezia boss will have to play with Venuti and Igor at centre-back and Benassi and Odriozola as full-backs in training. Nastasic and Igor, the two reserve defenders who will play against Milan, are both left-footed and have never been used together in a friendly or in an official match. Their first opponent? Zlatan Ibrahimovic or Olivier Giroud.
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Hate me for saying it, but this was such a good laugh…
I was glad when Milenkovic received a red card against Juventus. Probably not a good reason to be happy about but we need some easy wins as well due to our own injury problems and international calls.