Napoli striker Gonzalo Higuain is a doubt for their Serie A trip to strugglers Verona today after a demanding international break.

“Higuain played in the heat, made a long journey and he seemed very tired,” Napoli coach Maurizio Sarri said in his pre-match news conference yesterday.

“We’ll see in training if he has been able to recover and hopefully tomorrow (today) he’ll be in decent condition.”

Fourth-place Napoli can ill afford to be without Higuain, who started both of Argentina’s World Cup qualifiers – against Brazil and Colombia – having already lost forwards Dries Mertens and Manolo Gabbiadini to injury during the international break.

“It does penalise teams who have a lot of international players, as they travel all over the world for often pointless matches,” Sarri said.

“These players need training sessions more than rest.”

Sign up to our free newsletters

Get the best updates straight to your inbox:
Please select at least one mailing list.

You can unsubscribe at any time by clicking the link in the footer of our emails. We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform. By subscribing, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing.