The start of the 2025-26 season had seemed to be shaping up as a potential return to form for Federico Chiesa, who has struggled at both Juventus and Liverpool in recent seasons following an ACL injury to show his early career form when he had set himself out as Italy’s top young attacking talent.
Thirty minutes and a goal in Liverpool’s first three games might not have been the numbers of a key starter, but they at least felt like those of a quality bench option. It’s a minor surprise, then, to find
Chiesa omitted from the Reds’ Champions League squad in favour of Rio Ngumoha and Giovanni Leoni.
Ngumoha needs to be at the club one more season—this current season—before he qualifies for the B List as an underage player and part of Liverpool’s academy. Meanwhile, in three years Leoni will qualify as a homegrown, club trained player but in the interim the Italian will need to be registered.
Clubs can register up to 25 players to the A List but at least eight of them must be homegrown, meaning there are 17 slots for those who don’t qualify as homegrown. Including players like Ngumoha and Leoni who don’t currently qualify but eventually will, Liverpool had 18 players for those 17 slots.
Liverpool only have five homegrown players in the squad, limiting their overall A List squad to 22. The addition of homegrown Marc Guéhi from Crystal Palace would have allowed his registration as a sixth homegrown player and 23rd man in the squad but that would not have impacted Chiesa’s fate.
In full, this is Liverpool’s 23-man A List squad for the league phase of the 2025-26 Champions League:
Goalkeepers
1 Alisson Becker
25 Giorgi Mamardashvili
28 Freddie Woodman
Defenders
2 Joe Gomez
4 Virgil van Dijk
5 Ibrahima Konatee
6 Milos Kerkez
12 Conor Bradley
15 Giovanni Leoni
26 Andy Robertson
30 Jeremie Frimpong
Midfielders
3 Wataru Endo
7 Florian Wirtz
8 Dominik Szoboszlai
10 Alexis Mac Allister
17 Curtis Jones
38 Ryan Gravenberch
Forwards
9 Alexander Isak
11 Mohamed Salah
18 Cody Gakpo
22 Hugo Ekitike
73 Rio Ngumoha
