{"id":40980,"date":"2025-09-24T16:54:06","date_gmt":"2025-09-24T16:54:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/40980\/"},"modified":"2025-09-24T16:54:06","modified_gmt":"2025-09-24T16:54:06","slug":"giovanni-leoni-liverpool-defender-set-for-out-for-months-with-knee-injury","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/40980\/","title":{"rendered":"Giovanni Leoni: Liverpool defender set for out for months with knee injury"},"content":{"rendered":"

Liverpool defender Giovanni Leoni faces months on the sidelines after suffering a suspected anterior cruciate ligament injury on his debut.<\/p>\n

The 18-year-old played 81 minutes of Tuesday’s 2-1 Carabao Cup third-round win over Southampton<\/a> before going off with the injury.<\/p>\n

Leoni, who joined the Reds in August<\/a> from Parma for a fee of \u00a326m plus add-ons, has since had tests on his left knee.<\/p>\n

Sources have indicated the centre-back has damaged his ACL, which would probably rule out the teenager for most – if not all – of the rest of the season.<\/p>\n

“He is down because, for him, it didn’t feel good immediately. Normally the emotions of a player tell you a lot,” Liverpool head coach Arne Slot said after Tuesday’s match.<\/p>\n

The injury leaves Slot with just three recognised centre-backs in Virgil van Dijk, Ibrahima Konate and Joe Gomez.<\/p>\n

Liverpool are able to replace Leoni in their Champions League squad, with forward Federico Chiesa among the contenders for inclusion.<\/p>\n

Slot’s side have won all five Premier League matches so far this season in defence of their title.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Liverpool defender Giovanni Leoni faces months on the sidelines after suffering a suspected anterior cruciate ligament injury on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":40981,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-40980","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40980","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40980"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40980\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/40981"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40980"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40980"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40980"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}