2 months ago
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Liverpool has been told there's a possibility that Giovanni Leoni could have suffered a serious injury during Liverpool's win against Southampton.
That is the opinion of X account 'Physio Scout' who describes themselves as a football injury analyst. The 18-year-old was making his Reds debut in the Carabao Cup third round clash on Tuesday and enjoyed an impressive performance before his unfortunate end to the game.
While the nature of Leoni's injury and the period of time he'll be unavailable for has yet to confirmed, that hasn't stopped those on social media theorizing what his potential recovery could be for a number of possible injuries.
The person behind the X account claimed they'd be worried that Leoni's knee "fell into a into a valgus position". Given there was no obvious collision of knees, they said his knee collapsing in and the way he pivoted when colliding with the Southampton player has made them suspicious that the defender may have suffered an ACL injury.
If it was indeed an ACL injury, the potential recovery time would be nine months, compared to three to four months out if it was a meniscus injury instead. Should it be a minor bone bruise, Leoni would only be out of action for a week.
The account added that the Liverpool physios placed Leoni in a position to conduct a Lachmann's test, which is a clinical physical exam manoeuvre to test for a rupture of an ACL.
They added that the less serious patella/kneecap dislocation would result in a best case recovery timeline of three to six weeks recovery, or three months in the case of surgery being undertaken.
After the game, Arne Slot admitted Leoni's emotional reaction after his awkward fall doesn't bode well but informed the media that MRI scans will discover the extent of the injury. "He's down because for him it didn't feel good immediately," the Reds boss said.
"But this is something now we have to assess and normally these things don't happen in five to 10 minutes, you have to wait until tomorrow to see how he comes in and then maybe do an MRI scan to know more.
"Normally the emotions of a player tell you a lot, I saw a player in the Dutch Eredivisie at the weekend who went out completely in tears and it proved to be that he was right (that he had suffered a bad injury), but lets hope for the best."
Leoni was one of three players Slot specifically pointed out for their good performances at Anfield as the Dutchman said: "Not our best performance. You can expect that if you play a complete new team. So many players that haven't played for a long time.
"There were positives, Giorgi Mamardashvili had a good game, Federico Chiesa and Giovanni Leoni had a good game. A first goal for Alexander and another from Hugo. Positives from the game but how we played as a team - not taking anything away from Southampton because they played well - it wasn't our best performance."
It's a quick turnaround for the Premier League champions who return to action on Saturday as they travel to Crystal Palace, who remain the only other club in the league alongside the Reds who are unbeaten.
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