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In what can only be described as hideously poor luck, Gonzalo Higuain suffered an injury in training this week and will officially miss out on tomorrow's match against Udinese after being excluded from the traveling squad.
Presumably stemming from a reported collision between he and Valon Behrami earlier in the week, the injury is sidelining Higuain just a week after scoring his first Napoli hat trick and in general playing his best match in well over a month. While the timing is inconvenient at best (Udinese isn't exactly a pushover despite their disappointing results), Higuain is only expected to miss this match, so the rest of the season should be unaffected.
While injuries are by definition bad news, Duvan Zapata might be quietly reveling in the opportunity to start again. He had a brilliant start against Catania cut short by injury a few weeks ago, but managed to score a brace and was easily Napoli's best player on the pitch that day. The Colombian has also excelled in several recent substitute appearances, and has done a lot to start laying questions to rest from Napoli fans about his ability.
Losing your leading scorer is never an easy thing to cope with, but at least Napoli have a seemingly capable backup available at the moment, and giving Higuain a rest before the stretch run was probably a good idea anyways after his recent run of rough form. Hopefully he comes back firing and dominating back lines as we've seen from himso many times this season.
