Italy coach Marcello Lippi's injury conundrum was dramatically deepened on Wednesday when midfield bastion Gennaro Gattuso was ruled out of the Azzurris' first two World Cup matches against Ghana and the United States.
Gattuso picked up the knock in an unusually aggressive World Cup 'friendly' against Switzerland on May 30, said Italy doctor Enrico Castellacci. He exacerbated it in training and it now appears to be "a deep lesion of the left calf muscle," Castellacci said.
"Because it is so deep the recovery time will be longer, about two weeks," Castellacci said. That certainly rules out the AC Milan player for the first two games and could make him doubtful for the last group match against the Czech Republic - exactly a fortnight from now.
Gattuso's injury comes after two other heavy blows, the loss of star defenders Alessandro Nesta and Gianluca Zambrotta.
The injuries will force coach Marcello Lippi to start the World Cup - in which Italy is one of the favourites - with a heavily depleted team. Lippi immediately announced that he will not bring in a stand-in to replace Gattuso, given his importance to the team.
The player himself reacted with his usual humour: "If you ask me it's a voodoo curse. Someone somewhere is sticking pins into us. But I'm going to the World Cup. Even if Lippi leaves me out, I'll tie myself to the team bus". Gattuso, a tireless ball-winner and spoiler nicknamed Pitbull, joins defensive stalwarts Nesta and Zambrotta in sick bay.
AC Milan stopper Nesta is nursing a sore hamstring and hopes to be back against Ghana. Doctors are cautiously optimistic.
Juventus right-back Zambrotta, out with a thigh strain, will definitely miss Ghana but should be back for the USA. Zambrotta is one of Italy's most influential players, a non-stop tackler and overlapper on the right flank - but he could be decently replaced by Lazio's Massimo Oddo. Nesta, one of the world's top defenders, will be replaced by Inter Milan's Marco Materazzi but even Materazzi's biggest fans know he is an inferior player.
The biggest blow is the loss of Gattuso, who has no natural replacement. Lippi may field Roma's powerful midfielder Simone Perrotta or move Daniele Di Rossi, a similarly aggressive player, out to the left. Star playmaker Francesco Totti, meanwhile, is struggling to regain match fitness for the Ghana match.
He looked a shadow of himself against Switzerland and, two days later, against Ukraine.
Reacting to the Gattuso news, Totti said: "It's certainly not the team we would have liked to start with. The way things look, I could be the fittest". The injured players will have fresh tests on June 10, two days before Italy's first match.
Italy open their World Cup campaign against Ghana on June 12 in Hannover. Then they play the United States on June 17 in Kaiserslauten and the Czech Republic in Hamburg on June 22.
