Iraola has bad news for Liverpool fans over defender

Andoni Iraola has admitted that Giovanni Leoni is struggling to recover from a knee injury suffered a year ago.

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Andoni Iraola will be a happy man today after a big Champions League win last night against LASK.

But it’s not all good news, and in the press conference post-game, the Liverpool boss had to talk about a difficult subject – the struggles of young defender Giovanni Leoni to get back to fitness.

It’s not 13 months since the young centre back’s devastating knee injury, suffered just weeks after signing for the Reds. By now he should be training again, but there has been what Iraola calls a “delay” to the recovery.

Leoni struggles in rehab

“It’s taking more time than we wanted. The planning was to train with the team in this past international break [but] probably it’s going to be in the next international break, so we’ve lost one month in the process,” Iraola admitted.

“Giovanni’s injury, I wasn’t here but talking to the medical department, it was not just an ACL. It was a bad injury; a lot of things around the knee were involved apart from the ACL.

“He has to be very confident. The rehab process has to be very careful with him and we want to make sure once he comes to the team, he stays there in a good place.

“It’s true that we’ve had, not a setback, but a little bit of a delay, if you want. The plan now is he starts in the next break. It’s not that far but it’s a little bit later than we expected, yes.”

A month of delay is a setback, Andoni.

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