Juventus captain Giorgio Chiellini has been ruled out for around six months after undergoing surgery on a torn knee ligament, the Italian Seria A champions have said.
Centre back Chiellini, 35, sustained the injury during a training session last Friday, with new signing Matthijs de Ligt replacing him in the Juventus lineup in their 4-3 win over Napoli last weekend.
"Giorgio Chiellini underwent surgery to reconstruct the anterior cruciate ligament of the right knee," Juventus said in a statement on Tuesday.
"The intervention, performed at the Hochrum clinic in Innsbruck by professor Christian Fink in the presence of the Juventus club doctor, Dr. Tzouroudis, was perfectly successful.
"The expected recovery time is around 6 months."
Juve have won their opening two league matches of the season as they chase their ninth consecutive top-flight title but they must do so now without Chiellini for the majority of the campaign.
The Italy international is likely to return in March, meaning he could be fit for the Champions League quarter-finals, if Juventus make it that far.
African World Cup qualifiers to be live-streamed worldwide
Africa's lesser-known soccer teams will enjoy worldwide exposure in the next week after FIFA announced that their opening World Cup qualifying matches would be live-streamed on its website and on YouTube.
World soccer's ruling body said it had invested in the production of the broadcasting feed for the games and that the initiative would give fans in Africa and around the world unprecedented access to the African qualifiers.
"Bringing this exciting action to a global audience for the first time underscores FIFA’s ongoing digital transformation and its ongoing efforts to support football development in Africa," FIFA said, adding that it would announce which matches would be shown on its website.
Twenty-eight teams will be involved in the first round, a knockout contest where ties are played over two legs on a home-and-away basis. The 14 winners go into the group stage to join the continent's 26 ranked teams.
The first-round ties involve two sides, Angola and Togo, who qualified for the 2006 World Cup and have since fallen down the rankings. Angola face Gambia and Togo meet Comoros.
Other matches include Somalia v Zimbabwe -- with Somalia's home leg to be played in neigbouring Djibouti -- Sao Tome v Guinea-Bissau and Chad against neighbours Sudan.
