Whooping cough emergency in Sassuolo: the official formation reveals the mystery (and the names)

What was supposed to be a simple, albeit intricate, football challenge has turned into a health case for Sassuolo.

On the eve of the away match against Juventus, the black-green club was hit by a sudden outbreak of whooping cough that disrupted technical plans and significantly reduced the squad available to Fabio Grosso.

The statement from the Emilia-based club was unequivocal: one confirmed case of whooping cough in the team and another five players with compatible symptoms, all immediately isolated and monitored by the medical staff.

In respect of the privacy of the registered players, Sassuolo chose the path of discretion, avoiding disclosing the names of the involved players and postponing the announcement of the call-ups. As often happens in football, however, it was the submission of the official line-ups to the referee that lifted the veil of uncertainty.

Scrolling through the match roster at the Allianz Stadium, the notable absences stood out. Considering that Candè, Pieragnolo, Boloca, and Fadera were already unavailable for other reasons, attention focused on the new absentees: neither among the starters nor on the bench were Matic, Thorstvedt, Turati, and Coulibaly, four key elements of the squad.

At this point, the conclusion seems almost inevitable. Even without an official confirmation, imposed by medical confidentiality, the simultaneous and unannounced absence of Turati, Coulibaly, Matic, and Thorstvedt indicates them as the main suspects among the players affected by the cluster.

There remains a slight margin of uncertainty — it is not excluded that someone may have sustained a traumatic or muscular issue in the last 24 hours — but the temporal coincidence, combined with the situation generated by Bordetella pertussis, makes the correlation more than plausible. Meanwhile, the rest of the group, although asymptomatic, has been subjected to emergency antibiotic prophylaxis.

Whooping cough, a highly contagious bacterial infection known for “dog-like cough” attacks, affects the respiratory tract and spreads extremely easily in closed environments and close contact, such as locker rooms and team buses.

In a press conference, Grosso did not seek excuses, but could not hide the critical issues: it has been an extremely complicated week and the plans have been revised day by day in full emergency.