NewsGiovanni Leoni: I want to come back stronger than before
Giovanni Leoni has vowed to ‘come back stronger’ as he progresses in his recovery from a serious knee injury.
The 19-year-old centre-back sustained a torn ACL that cruelly ended his promising Liverpool debut in the Carabao Cup win over Southampton at Anfield in September.
Leoni, a summer signing from Parma, is continuing his rehabilitation programme at the AXA Training Centre and told Gazzetta dello Sport: “As soon as I hit the ground I said to Conor Bradley, my teammate: ‘I’ve done my cruciate.’
“It had never happened to me [before] but it was a strange feeling, I thought: ‘That’s it, period.’ A great, strong pain, the strongest pain I have felt in life… I believe that life reserves certain things and destiny has led me to this. To myself, I say: ‘It must have happened to make me stronger.’
“I can’t look at the long term, I only think about training my mind. I am determined to look at the day itself, to do what makes me feel good and take care of the recovery. Setting long-term goals means having new problems, in case of slow-downs [in recovery].
“Now the hardest part is over. I’m doing rehab, I’m in the swimming pool, the gym. For a footballer, an injury like this can be the most difficult moment of his career but now I just want to train my head to come back stronger than before.
“I think that’s the key thing: the head can do most of the work.”
Leoni enjoyed a superb, breakthrough season in Serie A in 2024-25 and earned his first call-up to the senior Italy squad a couple of weeks after his arrival at Anfield in August.
And he has spoken in glowing terms about Liverpool as a club and the players he now calls his teammates.
Leoni added: “When a team like Liverpool calls you, you find it hard not to look at them with different eyes. I must say that every day I believe that the Premier League was the best choice, I had the support and affection of my teammates.
“On TV you ask yourself: ‘Who knows what they will be like?’ Then you get to know them and discover that they are normal people. Technically they are almost all monsters, they never lift the ball an inch and, if they do, they apologise to you.
“Virgil van Dijk was the player I was inspired by. [Dominik] Szoboszlai has a football [style] that I had never seen before. [Mohamed] Salah is incredible for how he prepares his body during the week. He is always one of the first to arrive, he recovers, he is obsessed.
“Virgil, he has the charisma of a captain. After the injury he called me immediately. I had surgery by the surgeon who [operated on] him and now we are talking to each other.”