{"id":884196,"date":"2026-10-16T09:42:19","date_gmt":"2026-10-16T09:42:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/884196\/"},"modified":"2026-10-16T09:42:19","modified_gmt":"2026-10-16T09:42:19","slug":"giovanni-leonis-return-from-injury-delayed-in-fresh-blow-to-liverpool-liverpool","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/884196\/","title":{"rendered":"Giovanni Leoni\u2019s return from injury delayed in fresh blow to Liverpool | Liverpool"},"content":{"rendered":"

Giovanni Leoni\u2019s Liverpool return has been delayed because of the severity of the knee injury sustained on his debut, Andoni Iraola<\/a> has revealed.<\/p>\n

The central defender had been expected to resume team training during the recent international break but that schedule has been put back by about a month.<\/p>\n

Leoni, a \u00a326m signing from Parma in 2025, sustained an anterior cruciate ligament injury against Southampton<\/a> 13 months ago. Iraola has disclosed the damage extended beyond the ACL and Liverpool must tread carefully with the 19-year-old\u2019s rehabilitation as a consequence.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is taking more time than we wanted,\u201d the head coach said. \u201cWith Gio, the plan was to train with the team in this past international break. It is probably now going to be the next international break [which starts on 9 November], so we have lost one month in the process.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith Giovanni\u2019s injury, I wasn\u2019t here but talking to the medical department it wasn\u2019t just an ACL. It was a bad injury, a lot of things around the knee were involved apart from the ACL. I think he has to be very confident in the rehab and the process has to be very careful with him.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe want to make sure once he comes to the team he stays there in a good place. It\u2019s true we\u2019ve had a little bit of not a setback but a delay, if you want. The plan now is he starts in the next break. It\u2019s not that far off, but a little bit later than we expected.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dominik Szoboszlai, Alexander Isak and Cody Gakpo remain doubts for Saturday\u2019s Premier League trip to Brentford having missed Liverpool\u2019s last two fixtures with injuries picked up on international duty.<\/p>\n

Iraola had more encouraging news concerning Liverpool\u2019s other long-term injury casualties, Conor Bradley and Hugo Ekitik\u00e9, with the former close to starting training with the squad. Bradley has been sidelined since sustaining a serious knee injury at Arsenal in January, and Ekitik\u00e9\u2019s impressive debut season at Liverpool was cut short by an achilles injury against Paris Saint-Germain in April.<\/p>\n

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\u201cThey are both doing very well and they are in a good place,\u201d he said. \u201cConor is not so far from training with the group \u2013 not full training but doing some things with the group. Hugo is a little bit behind that but that was always the plan. He is still doing very well according to the plan. When they have been injured for so long it\u2019s difficult to say [when they will be back] but I think Conor is not very far from starting doing things with us.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Giovanni Leoni\u2019s Liverpool return has been delayed because of the severity of the knee injury sustained on his…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":884197,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[69],"tags":[403,99],"class_list":["post-884196","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-soccer","tag-soccer","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/884196","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=884196"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/884196\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/884197"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=884196"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=884196"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=884196"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}