Liverpool have completed the signing of Giovanni Leoni from Parma for \u00a326m, viewing the 18-year-old as part of succession planning at centre-back. Leoni has signed a six-year contract at Anfield, a move that takes Arne Slot’s summer spending past \u00a3300m.<\/p>\n
The club believe they now have a full complement of centre-backs but have not ruled out further additions if the opportunity arises. They also opened talks with Crystal Palace over Marc Guehi this week.<\/p>\n
Leoni turned down Newcastle, who instead signed Malick Thiaw from AC Milan, in favour of Liverpool. The club expect Leoni to be named in the next Italy squad and deemed him the best young central defender available, with the potential to improve considerably.<\/p>\n
Liverpool say the signing is part of longer-term planning, aware Van Dijk will be new 36 when his new deal ends. They remain in talks with Ibrahima Konate, whose contract expires next summer, but risk losing the France international on a free transfer then.<\/p>\n
The squad had been reduced to three recognised centre-backs after the sales of Jarell Quansah and Nat Phillips. With Joe Gomez injured, midfielders Wataru Endo, Ryan Gravenberch and Trey Nyoni and left-back Andy Robertson all operated in the middle of defence in pre-season.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Giovanni Leoni to Liverpool from Parma for \u00a326m on a six-year deal; 18-year-old central defender now<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1743,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[175],"tags":[754,409,753,182],"class_list":["post-1742","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-liverpool","tag-giovanni-leoni","tag-ibrahima-konate","tag-joe-gomez","tag-transfers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1742","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1742"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1742\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1744,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1742\/revisions\/1744"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1743"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1742"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1742"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1742"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}