Real Madrid announced today (Wednesday) that its defender Raul Asensio will undergo surgery after suffering a stress fracture in his right tibia.
The Spanish club explained that the surgery will take place tomorrow, Thursday, while local media reported that the period of his absence may range between two and four months if the recovery process goes according to plan.
Asensio, 23 years old, has suffered from a series of physical problems since the beginning of the season, which prevented him from being on Real Madrid's roster during the first five matches.
The Spanish defender participated in 34 matches with the team last season, but lost his place in the starting lineup during the last three months of the season.
This season, coach Jose Mourinho relied on newcomers Ibrahima Konate and Dean Huyson as the main duo in the heart of defence, along with German Antonio Rudiger, while Eder Militao continues the recovery phase from surgery on the hamstring muscles that has kept him out of the field since April.
Parma has become the third club in the Italian Football League to change its coach this season. The current 15th-placed player decided to sign former international Alberto Gilardino to succeed Spaniard Carlos Cuesta, who was sacked at the beginning of the week.
The club, owned by American businessman Kyle Krause, said in a statement published on Wednesday evening: “Alberto Gilardino is the new coach of Parma after signing a contract that extends until the end of the current season, with the option to extend for two additional years.”
Gilardino has been without a team since his dismissal from coaching Pisa in January 2026, after achieving one win and 11 draws against 11 defeats in the Italian League.
The 2006 world champion, who played 57 international matches with the Italian national team and scored 17 goals, previously played for Parma as a player for three seasons between 2002 and 2005.
His coaching career has not yet achieved the same successes. In particular, he supervised Genoa and led it to return to the top flight in 2023, then ensured its brilliant survival in “Serie A” at the end of the 2023-2024 season by finishing in eleventh place, before being dismissed in November 2024.
Gilardino (44 years old) succeeds Carlos Cuesta, former assistant to Arsenal's Spanish coach Mikel Arteta, who was dismissed from his position after one season and two months.
The 31-year-old Spaniard was the youngest coach in the five major European leagues. In his first season at the helm of Parma's coaching staff, he led the team to thirteenth place.
But his team lost three of its first five matches this season, settling for four points, and was also eliminated in the round of 32 of the Italian Cup against Cremonese, a second-tier club.
Cuesta became the third coach in the Italian League to be dismissed since mid-August, after Fabio Grosso (Fiorentina) and Domenico Tedesco (Bologna).
The Mercedes driver pledged; Italian Kimi Antonelli will return things to normal and strengthen his position in the lead, with Formula 1 returning to Malaysia for the first time since 2017, when the Sepang Circuit will host the Bahrain Grand Prix this weekend instead of Sakhir due to the situation in the Middle East.
The race was supposed to be held in Bahrain during last April.
Antonelli, who finished the Azerbaijan race last week in fifth place, is ahead of his Mercedes colleague. Briton George Russell, with a difference of 66 points after the latter won in Baku by a very narrow margin over the Red Bull driver. Dutch Max Verstappen.
After a hydraulic failure hampered him during testing, Antonelli suffered an accident in qualifying and started in 16th place.
Antonelli said that he intends to “get things back to normal” at the Sepang International Circuit, which hosted the last Formula 1 race in 2017.
He said about Russell's attempt to get ahead of him and grab the title: “He was always my rival. But I will make sure to get things back to normal and return to my usual level,” he added jokingly that he was driving “like my grandmother” in the “Azerbaijan Race.”
Antonelli, seeking to become the first Italian champion since Alberto Ascari in 1953, was only 11 years old when the last Formula 1 race was held in Sepang.
That race was won by four-time world champion Verstappen, who proved last Sunday that he has the speed that makes him a threat to the Mercedes duo as the season approaches its decisive stages.
He and his French colleague Isaac Hajjar showed; Who came third was the power of the Red Bull car and its speed on the straight lines in Baku.
But Ferrari and McLaren cars will also be competing at the Sepang circuit, in a race that is expected to be close.
The Ferrari team will enter the battle with determination after its French director, Fred Vasseur, ignored rumors linking the former president of Red Bull. British Christian Horner took his post and urged the team to fight for every remaining point.
“We will make updates and keep up the pressure until the last turn,” he said, adding that data for the 2017 Malaysian race would be “practically useless.”
He explained: “Everything has changed: the tires, engines and structures are completely different for everyone.”
Ferrari confirmed on Tuesday that it gives “full confidence” to Vasseur, who expressed his dissatisfaction with being asked about Horner “25 times a day” in Baku.
The defending world champion, McLaren driver, took the lead; British Lando Norris scene in Baku after he said that Argentine Franco Colapinto should be banned from participating, before he later apologized to the Alpine driver for what he said.
Colapinto collided with his Alpine teammate. Frenchman Pierre Gasly, who in turn collided with Norris, knocking all three out of the race.
Norris said: “I sent a letter of apology to Franco for the comments I made that I should never have said.”
He added: “I should be more aware than that, and emotions were running high, but that is no excuse. "It was wrong."
After the chaos of the Baku highways, it seems that a “normal” race is on the horizon, although the usual rain and storms remain an influential factor in Malaysia.
Half of the drivers will return to the fast and fluid circuit that many love, while others will experience it for the first time.
Seven-time British world champion Lewis Hamilton (Ferrari) will seek to enhance his joint record with German Michael Schumacher, which is 5 starts from pole position and one win.
Two-time world champion Spaniard Fernando Alonso (Aston Martin) will also chase his fourth victory in Sepang to equal the record.
