caughtoffside
·21. März 2025
“Horrible, horrible” – Journalist reacts to major possible Arsenal injury blow

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Yahoo sportscaughtoffside
·21. März 2025
Arsenal may have been dealt some worrying injury news regarding their Italian defender Riccardo Calafiori.
The 22-year-old has shone since joining Arsenal from Bologna last summer, but his fitness record isn’t the best, and he had a nasty fall whilst playing for his country last night.
Calafiori slipped and landed awkwardly, with Arsenal journalist and CaughtOffside columnist Charles Watts reacting on X.
See below as Watts was clearly worried after what he saw from Calafiori during Italy’s game against Germany, with the Gunners having a huge game against Real Madrid in the Champions League coming up after the international break…
I really, really hope this doesn't end up being as bad as it looks. That is a horrible, horrible slip. https://t.co/vKo2m6jdVR — Charles Watts (@charles_watts) March 20, 2025
As quoted by the Metro, it seems Calafiori spoke to reporters and said he didn’t know how serious the injury was.
Italy manager Luciano Spalletti seemingly also wasn’t sure about Calafiori’s status for the moment, so it might be that fans will have to be patient before confirmation on this one.
Riccardo Calafiori is comforted by Antonio Rudiger (Photo by Alex Grimm/Getty Images)
Arsenal won’t want to be without Calafiori for too long, with the north London giants already enduring enough bad luck as it is in that department this season.
Bukayo Saka has missed a lot of games, while Kai Havertz and Gabriel Jesus also won’t play again this season.
Elsewhere, Ben White and Martin Odegaard are among other key players to have missed a lot of games, while Gabriel Martinelli also only recently came back from a spell on the sidelines.
This has led to Mikel Arteta having to play Spanish midfielder Mikel Merino as a makeshift striker in recent games – a move which has, in fairness, worked surprisingly well.
Still, Calafiori being out would undoubtedly be a blow when Arteta really needs to be able to rotate his players at this difficult stage of the campaign.