Gianluigi Buffon is not expected to miss Italy’s remaining group matches despite being replaced at half-time in last night’s 1-1 draw with Paraguay.
The Italian keeper apparently felt troubled by the back injury in the warm-up for the game and with the score at 1-0 to the South Americans, was duly replaced by Federico Marchetti.
Buffon has just under a week to recover before Italy face New Zealand in their next match. The keeper has remarked that he “hopes to recover in two days” but Coach Marcelo Lippi is far more cautious…
“I don’t know how bad the injury is or how long it will take him to recover…I cannot evaluate the extent of his injury. The doctor will see to that.”
At this stage Team doctor Enrico Castellacci has refrained from giving his own assessment, remarking that no verdict would be given until tests had been carried out on the problem.
Buffon is the most selected keeper in the McDonalds/FIFA game with over 29% of Fantasy Managers staking the 8.0 orice tag on the Italian’s clean sheet prospects.

