Liverpool’s thin defender corps will be thinner for a while as center back Giovanni Leoni’s leg injury is an ACL tear.
Leoni, 18, arrived from Parma this summer and made his Reds debut on Tuesday in the side’s League Cup triumph over Southampton.
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The club have confirmed the severity of Leoni’s injury, after Fabrizio Romano reported Wednesday that the Italian suffered a torn ACL.
Leoni became a regular starter for Parma in the second half of last season, spending a lot of time at center back but also playing on the right side of the back line.
Arne Slot confirms Giovanni Leoni ACL tear, says Van Dijk and Gomez can help
(from liverpoolfc.com)
“He is not in a good place, of course, because he tore his ACL and it means he will be out for a year,” Slot said on Friday, September 26. “Being so young and coming to a new country and playing so well in your first game. It’s very hard to take the positive side.”
“There’s never a positive side, but you always try to look at a positive side and that is that he is still so young, so he has so many years still to go after he recovers from a terrible injury like that.”
Slot was asked whether the club’s experience with the similar injury for veteran defenders Virgil van Dijk and Joe Gomez will help Leoni.
“I think the main and most important thing is the surgeons that are going to do the surgery, then second of all the ones that do the recovery, the rehab, with him. But then it’s always nice if you can do this in a surrounding with players who have lived through this as well, they can give you the right energy maybe in certain moments.”
“And I think our players already showed in the last two days a lot of compassion towards him and they will not stop doing that in the upcoming year.”
