Chiesa’s Liverpool Crossroads: A Fight for His Future
Federico Chiesa’s Liverpool story has reached that uneasy middle ground where hope and hard reality start to collide.
The numbers from 2025/26 are unforgiving. Thirty-three appearances in all competitions, but only two starts. Just 686 minutes across the entire campaign. Strip it down to the Premier League and the picture is even starker: 23 appearances, one start, 278 minutes, 2 goals, 1 assist.
For a player of his calibre, that is a warning light. For a high-profile signing trying to rebuild rhythm, confidence and trust after a bruising first year at Anfield, it is a siren.
This summer, something has to give.
Staying to Fight, Not to Flee
According to Fabrizio Romano, Chiesa is not sprinting towards the exit. Not yet. His intention is to report for pre-season and work under new Liverpool head coach Andoni Iraola.
Romano, speaking on his Italian YouTube channel, laid out the landscape: Juventus, Inter, Napoli, Roma – all clubs whose names keep circling around Chiesa as potential destinations, all being mentioned as possible lifelines if his Liverpool chapter closes.
Plenty are asking whether Chiesa will become one of the protagonists of this transfer window. For now, the answer is no. Not in June. Not immediately.
“At the present time,” Romano explained, “the decision made by the Liverpool player is to participate in the preseason – to get together with the new coach Andoni Iraola. Chiesa just wants to play his cards in preseason at Liverpool.”
That last line cuts to the heart of it. Chiesa is not demanding assurances. He is asking for a chance. No guarantees, no promises – just the opportunity to show Iraola there is still a role for him in this squad.
Iraola’s First Big Call
For Iraola, this is an early, revealing examination of his judgment.
On paper, Chiesa brings plenty: experience at the highest level, intelligence in tight spaces, technical quality, and the ability to operate across the front line. But his Liverpool record to date forces some uncomfortable questions about his sharpness, his durability and how naturally he fits into a demanding tactical system.
Iraola’s football is unforgiving. It leans on running power, aggression without the ball, precise timing, and clarity in transition. At his peak, Chiesa ticks many of those boxes. He can press, he can break, he can hurt teams in broken-field situations.
The doubt lies in whether Liverpool will see enough of that version of Chiesa in pre-season to justify keeping him beyond the summer window. This is not a decision to be rushed through in late June, as Romano made clear. The club and the player are looking at the weeks ahead, not the next few days.
If pre-season shows that the gap between what Iraola needs and what Chiesa can currently offer is too wide, the equation changes quickly. At that point, his name moves from Liverpool’s bench to the Italian market’s shortlist.
Serie A Waiting Quietly
The Italian interest has not gone away. It has simply gone quiet.
Juventus, Inter, Napoli and Roma all make logical sense as potential destinations. Chiesa is still a big name in Serie A, still a player whose strengths and recent struggles are well understood in that league. Clubs there know what he can bring when fit and firing, and they know the context of his stalled spell in England.
Liverpool’s view will be more clinical. Iraola must decide whether Chiesa can genuinely add depth, unpredictability and experience to his attacking options, or whether this is a squad place that could be better used – and a wage that could be better spent.
If the Basque coach sees a forward who can adapt, run, and deliver in his system, Chiesa’s Anfield story might yet have a second act. If he does not, the final weeks of the transfer window may simply complete a move that never truly found its rhythm.
For now, Chiesa has chosen the hard road. No early escape, no quick return to familiar surroundings. He will stay. He will train. He will compete. He will try to change minds.
In a Liverpool shirt, this pre-season might be the last hand he gets to play.
