Back Where He Belongs: Injury-Haunted Italy Striker Pietro Pellegri Resumes Torino Training Ahead of Serie A Return

Turin — A familiar face reappeared at Torino's training ground this week, and for Pietro Pellegri, every step back onto the pitch represents a small victory in a career defined by false starts. According to Football Italia, the 24-year-old striker has resumed training with the Granata after yet another lengthy layoff, reigniting hopes that one of Italian football's most tormented talents can finally assemble the career that once seemed destined for the very top. There was a time when Pellegri was the crown jewel of Italian youth football. He announced himself at Genoa as a fresh-faced teenager, becoming one of the youngest goalscorers in Serie A history and earning comparisons to Zlatan Ibrahimovic for his unusual blend of height, soft touch, and composure in the box. Monaco swooped in 2018 in a deal reportedly worth in excess of €20 million — a staggering fee for a player who had only just turned 17. What followed, however, was a story of near-constant physical frustration. Muscle injuries arrived with brutal regularity, eroding his momentum season after season. A loan spell at AC Milan in 2021 promised a fresh start but delivered more of the same, and his subsequent move to Torino was framed as the reset he so desperately needed. Instead, the pattern stubbornly repeated itself, leaving a player once capped by Roberto Mancini's Italy stuck in a cycle of rehabilitation. Now, with the treatment room finally behind him — at least for the moment — Pellegri is targeting a competitive return. For Torino, his availability would provide a physically imposing, technically gifted focal point in attack. For the player himself, the objectives are simpler: string together matches, stay fit, and rediscover what it feels like to be a footballer rather than a patient. The grander dream, inevitably, is the Azzurri. With Italy working through qualification for the 2026 World Cup — and still haunted by their failure to reach the last two editions — the national team is perpetually starved of strikers who can actually stay on the pitch. Nobody is pretending a Pellegri recall is imminent, but form and fitness have a habit of forcing conversations that seemed unthinkable months earlier. In a sport that adores a comeback story nearly as much as it loves a wonderkid, Italy's forgotten talent has at least returned to where he belongs: on the training pitch, ball at his feet, and a point to prove. The next chapter of Pietro Pellegri's career begins now — and this time, he insists, it will be different.