{"id":15978,"date":"2025-08-15T17:38:44","date_gmt":"2025-08-15T17:38:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/?p=15978"},"modified":"2025-08-15T17:38:44","modified_gmt":"2025-08-15T17:38:44","slug":"liverpool-seal-26m-leoni-signing-and-see-him-as-potential-van-dijk-successor-liverpool","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/?p=15978","title":{"rendered":"Liverpool seal \u00a326m Leoni signing and see him as potential Van Dijk successor | Liverpool"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\n<\/p>\n<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><span class=\"dcr-1ypwo6h\">Quick Guide<\/span><\/p>\n<h4 class=\"dcr-1fa5dcn\">How do I sign up for sport breaking news alerts?<\/h4>\n<p><span class=\"dcr-55zfp0\"><span class=\"dcr-3j53am\"><span class=\"dcr-41evle\"><\/span>Show<\/span><\/span><\/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":"<p>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. Leoni was a target for other clubs, including Newcastle, and is expected to go straight into the first-team<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15979,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[9435,8461,8434,2069,434,5292,8181,9436,7103],"class_list":{"0":"post-15978","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-26m","9":"tag-dijk","10":"tag-leoni","11":"tag-liverpool","12":"tag-potential","13":"tag-seal","14":"tag-signing","15":"tag-successor","16":"tag-van"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15978","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15978"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15978\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/15979"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15978"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15978"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15978"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}