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Giovanni Leoni might have secured a transfer to Liverpool during the summer window, but he has just been handed a reminder — not that there are any suggestions he needed one — that there is plenty of work still to be done for the youngster to realize his vast potential.
The 18-year-old is among the highest-rated young defenders in world soccer, and despite his tender age, he is viewed as one of the four senior center-backs in Liverpool's squad, along with Virgil van Dijk, Ibrahima Konate, and Joe Gomez.
However, despite being called up to the Italy squad for the Azzurri's games during the international break, he was not included in the gameday squad against Estonia last week, and he is also expected to miss out against Israel on Monday.
Those omissions for Leoni should come as little surprise considering how young he is, and they should perhaps serve as a warning to Liverpool fans not to expect too much from Leoni so early on in his career.
That's despite him being tipped to be Van Dijk's long-term successor at the club by Martin Semmens, who was the Southampton CEO when Saints signed Van Dijk, and who also worked for Leoni's previous club Parma.
"Yeah, absolutely for me [Leoni is the heir to the Van Dijk throne]," Semmens told talkSPORT last week. "We signed him the second year I was there in the summer.
"I think it was clearly the best young centre back in Italy, if not Europe.
"And again, we sold him the vision to come to our club to play in Serie A.
"I think it was 17 when he started playing, and then when the right moment comes, you will go.
"The view was that they would probably stay there longer than one year, but Leoni was such a level, and again, I think it highlights Liverpool's ability that they spotted that.
"There were other clubs in the Premier League that asked me about him - not as an Executive for Parma because I'd left by then, and I told them what I thought, and they didn't follow through on it. Liverpool never called me.
"Five or six Premier League teams asked me. I told them he's as good as Virgil.
"Liverpool never called me, never asked for a reference, because they've got such an ability to find those players.
"Top player!"
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