Giovanni Leoni’s Liverpool return has been delayed because of the severity of the knee injury sustained on his debut, Andoni Iraola has revealed.
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.
Leoni, a £26m signing from Parma in 2025, sustained an anterior cruciate ligament injury against Southampton 13 months ago. Iraola has disclosed the damage extended beyond the ACL and Liverpool must tread carefully with the 19-year-old’s rehabilitation as a consequence.
“It is taking more time than we wanted,” the head coach said. “With 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.
“With Giovanni’s injury, I wasn’t here but talking to the medical department it wasn’t 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.
“We want to make sure once he comes to the team he stays there in a good place. It’s true we’ve 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’s not that far off, but a little bit later than we expected.”
Dominik Szoboszlai, Alexander Isak and Cody Gakpo remain doubts for Saturday’s Premier League trip to Brentford having missed Liverpool’s last two fixtures with injuries picked up on international duty.
Iraola had more encouraging news concerning Liverpool’s other long-term injury casualties, Conor Bradley and Hugo Ekitiké, 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 Ekitiké’s impressive debut season at Liverpool was cut short by an achilles injury against Paris Saint-Germain in April.
“They are both doing very well and they are in a good place,” he said. “Conor is not so far from training with the group – 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’s difficult to say [when they will be back] but I think Conor is not very far from starting doing things with us.”
