NewsGiovanni Leoni interview: 'I knew it was ACL and asked why me? Now there's light at the end of the tunnel'

“That night, when I had the injury, I was close to Conor Bradley and I told him, ‘This is ACL, 100 per cent.’ The pain is the strongest pain I’ve ever felt.”

The night the Liverpool defender refers to is, of course, September 23, 2025.

For almost 80 minutes under the floodlights at Anfield, it’s a hugely memorable occasion for Leoni.

It’s not only his debut for the Reds, whom he joined a little over a month earlier from Serie A side Parma.

It’s an evening when Leoni showcases many of the traits – in possession and in defending – that had persuaded the club to invest in the talented teenager last summer.

It’s set to be a cup win to mark his first appearance, too, with Liverpool seeing off Southampton in round three of the League Cup.

And then, in a split-second, the night is something else entirely.

Contesting a tackle on the right flank of the Anfield Road half of the pitch, Leoni lands awkwardly near the perimeter and stays on the ground.

It’s quickly apparent he is in significant discomfort.

Scans in the days that follow confirm Leoni’s own instant diagnosis: an anterior cruciate ligament injury that will sideline him for the next year.

“I don’t want to be back in that night,” the No.15 tells Liverpoolfc.com, entirely understandably, during an in-depth interview.

But he has, since that night, wanted to use it for the better.

“Of course, when I had that moment in the first game, in my debut, I said, ‘Why [did this happen] to me?’ But I don’t think that is the best thing to say to yourself,” Leoni states.

“So I tried to change [my] mind and to say, ‘OK, it’s happening to me so I have to do something to become better than before.’ This was the best thing to do for me.”

The centre-back continues: “In this period I understood a lot of things. I try to be positive every day, even if I had bad days, because in the first months it’s not simple.

“You have a lot of routines to change. You have a lot of bad days, more than good days at the start. Now of course it’s different but at the start it was tough mentally and physically.

“Then after three or four months everything is more mentally than physically, because you can run, you can start walking again, running again, lift weights, so everything is easier as [concerns] the body. But mentally, it’s a tough journey.

“But for me, if you take everything with a good mentality, you can understand and be back stronger than before. I tried to view it as an opportunity to improve.”

Leoni is delivering these words in thoughtful, fluent English, despite his protestations that his use of the language is not yet up to scratch.

A chance to fast-track his learning was a bittersweet by-product of the need for long-term rehabilitation of his ACL injury.

Extended time at the Reds’ AXA Training Centre base, alongside three two-hour English lessons a week, have brought Leoni to this point of flowing conversation.

“I think when you are in a different country you have to speak that language, for being better on the field and in the training ground,” he observes.

“Now I could say that it is getting better and everything is easier because I can speak and I can have a conversation with all of the guys.”

Elsewhere off the pitch, he has set up home in Liverpool and developed friendships with teammates, noting of his close bonds: “To be fair, everyone.

“But I can say that now I’m spending a lot of time with Hugo [Ekitike], Stefan [Bajcetic], Conor – because we did a little bit of rehab together.”

Virgil van Dijk has been a natural mentor and sounding board ever since the initial hours after Leoni sustained the injury.

The Liverpool captain can empathise and encourage his younger colleague, having emerged from his own lengthy ACL recovery in 2020-21.

“He helped me a lot,” says Leoni.

His face lights up, meanwhile, when he describes the impact of Reds fans’ support for him across the past 12 months.

“They have always been with me,” the 19-year-old beams. “I can feel that we did this journey as a rehab together, because even if they didn’t see me, I received a lot of messages on Instagram, on everything.

“Without them I couldn’t be where I am now. So, I’m really glad to have that.

“I didn’t expect that but as I told you, I’m really glad to have them and I can’t wait to give them a lot of good days and games together – to win, to do a lot of good things together.”

In Leoni’s own words, he has now reached the stage of his rehab where he can ‘see the light at the end of the tunnel’.

This interview is taking place in the last days of Liverpool’s recent pre-season tour of the USA, where the Italian maintained his programme with running sessions and ball work.

The imagined moments that kept him going during the tougher days of recovery have become achievable targets to be realised.

“Now I feel really good,” Leoni reports. “After 10 months, I’m back on the pitch alone. But I feel really good, in the last weeks I felt really good on the pitch.

“The knee is looking good and I'm feeling the knee really good, so I can’t wait to be back with the team as soon as possible and then come back to play games in front of the fans.

“Now I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. I’m not with the team, but I think in a short time now I can be back with the team.

“Then we will see how the knee will respond and how I will feel to be back playing games.”

The subject of playing again, the prospect of putting on his boots and walking out to be part of a fixture, draws the most instinctive of responses from Leoni.

We ask, do you think every day about what that will feel like?

He replies: “I’ve been dreaming about that since I had the injury.

“I can’t wait to be back in front of the fans. These two months now the excitement is going to be more and more, because as I said, I can see the light until the end. So, now I can feel more that the comeback is closer. So, I’m really happy.

“After a lot of months, when you had this type of injury, of course I’m going to be a little bit nervous because I didn’t play for a year or something like that.

“To be back playing in front of everyone, in front of the world, I’ll be a little bit nervous but it will be a [type of] nervous that will help me. It will be more excited than nervous.”

Though match No.1 for Leoni at the Reds was under Arne Slot, the second time he pulls on the jersey is set to be under the instruction of Andoni Iraola.

The player and his new head coach have talked already about what the future may look like.

“I spoke with him and we spoke about the injury, of course, and rehab,” says Leoni. “Then we did some analysis together to understand the way that he wants to play.

“He’s a really good coach but before [that] he is a really good person. You can speak with him and you can understand the way that he wants to play.

“I can’t wait to play under him.”

The trajectory of Leoni’s Liverpool career changed dramatically on that night last September.

As he moves towards restarting the story properly, though, what hasn’t changed is his ambition.

“The goals are always the same as last year,” finishes this admirable young man.

“The thing is that I want to be back and win the most games as possible, win the most trophies as possible. The goals are more as a team than as an individual.”