{"id":347062,"date":"2025-08-15T17:25:10","date_gmt":"2025-08-15T17:25:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/347062\/"},"modified":"2025-08-15T17:25:10","modified_gmt":"2025-08-15T17:25:10","slug":"liverpool-seal-26m-leoni-signing-and-see-him-as-potential-van-dijk-successor-liverpool","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/347062\/","title":{"rendered":"Liverpool seal \u00a326m Leoni signing and see him as potential Van Dijk successor | Liverpool"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">Liverpool have confirmed the signing of the 18-year-old centre-back Giovanni Leoni from Parma for an initial \u00a326m. He has a six-year contract and is regarded by the club as a potential long-term successor to Virgil van Dijk.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">Leoni was a target for other clubs, including Newcastle, and is expected to go straight into the first-team squad. The 6ft 4in defender has played for Italy\u2019s under-18s and under-19s.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">The signing was announced shortly before Liverpool start their Premier League title defence at home to Bournemouth, a game Leoni will be at Anfield to watch.<\/p>\n<p>Quick GuideHow do I sign up for sport breaking news alerts?Show<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Download the Guardian app from the iOS App Store on iPhone or the Google Play store on Android by searching for &#8216;The Guardian&#8217;.<\/li>\n<li>If you already have the Guardian app, make sure you\u2019re on the most recent version.<\/li>\n<li>In the Guardian app, tap the Menu button at the bottom right, then go to Settings (the gear icon), then Notifications.<\/li>\n<li>Turn on sport notifications.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Thank you for your feedback.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">Leoni, who played in Serie A for the first time last season, making 17 appearances, told Liverpool\u2019s website of his excitement at joining. \u201cI\u2019m so honoured,\u201d he said. \u201cI was very happy [about Liverpool being interested]. When I saw this I said: \u2018Wow, this is crazy.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">He will wear the No 15 shirt and said: \u201cI want to improve a lot with my new teammates in training and after on the pitch, in the Premier League and the Champions League.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Liverpool have confirmed the signing of the 18-year-old centre-back Giovanni Leoni from Parma for an initial \u00a326m. He&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":347063,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[13,12,14],"class_list":{"0":"post-347062","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-stories"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115033953253217961","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/347062","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=347062"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/347062\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/347063"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=347062"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=347062"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=347062"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}