As a boy growing up in Italy, Lorenzo Lucca would avidly watch anything he could find on television related to the Premier League.
He was a particular fan of the film ‘Goal!’ — a 2005 movie that featured slightly awkward cameos by Kieron Dyer, Alan Shearer and Zinedine Zidane — which tells the story of a young Mexican who goes from the streets of Los Angeles, to improbably earning a trial with Newcastle, before eventually scoring the goal that helps them qualify for the Champions League.
Lucca would see himself reflected in the boy who always dreamed of playing in the Premier League. This evening, when Nottingham Forest head to Elland Road, the 25-year-old could see that dream fulfilled.
His own journey to this point has been less of a fairytale, but has involved numerous challenges and hurdles along the way.
Growing up in Moncalieri — a region of Turin, famed for its 12th century castle — Lucca joined the Torino academy at the age of eight, when the now 6ft 7in (201 cm) forward was already tall for his age. His first senior football was with Athletico Torino, in the sixth tier of Italian football, at the age of 16 — he scored twice on his debut.
Forest — who he joined on loan from Napoli until the end of the season, with an option to make the move permanent for around €40million (£34.7m), in a deal brokered by agent Giuseppe Riso — are his eighth professional club. He has played in Serie D, C, B and A — and in the Netherlands.
And he arrives in Nottingham with a point to prove, following a disappointing spell with Napoli.
Lorenzo Lucca training with his new team-mates (Nottingham Forest FC)
Sources close to Lucca say that he opted to come to Forest because it was an opportunity to fulfil his dream, as much as it was to put his recent frustrations behind him. His objective is to help to take Forest as high as possible, as well as getting his own career back on track.
Lucca is aware that, in football, every season is a different chapter. He acknowledges that his time in Naples did not go as he had hoped, but he believes that, if he works hard and has the right attitude, he can show his true abilities in England and in the Europa League. He is now fully focused on the present, in Nottingham.
From the moment he arrived in another city with a historic castle, he has been focused on earning that Premier League opportunity — and he has made a positive early impression at the Nigel Doughty Academy.
“We have been surprised in one sense, because we were told that his English is not very good, but it is,” Forest manager Sean Dyche said in his pre-match press conference before the Europa League match with Ferencvaros. “He is a big, big fella, but he can also move. He moves well. We have seen the clips of him before he came here… but since he has been here he looks fit and well and, most importantly, like he wants to do well.
“That is always part of it — having demands on himself. He looks like a player who wants to make a mark here.”
Lucca himself is very much aware of the need to give his story a positive plot twist at the City Ground. When he joined Napoli from Udinese — in a €9million loan move with a €26million obligation to buy, in July 2025 — Lucca had been on an upward trajectory.
Like many young Italian strikers, the early stage of his career was accompanied by a lot of hype. In 2021-2022 he scored six goals in his first seven games in Serie B, with Pisa and there was an expectation that Italy head coach Roberto Mancini would call him up. But he remained with the Italy under-21 side, even as Ajax made him the first Italian player to play for them when they signed him on loan in 2022-2023. The Dutch club did not take up the option to sign him and he instead joined Udinese.
Celebrating a goal for Italy’s U21s in November 2021 (Charles McQuillan/Getty Images)
In October 2024 he won the first of five senior caps for Italy against Israel. Last season was the best of his career, as he hit double figures for the first time in a decent Udinese side in Serie A, scoring 14 goals in all competitions.
Napoli believed that he might be able to flourish further, with better players around him. Manager Antonio Conte liked the idea that, if opposition sides attempted to press Napoli, they could go long to Lucca and he’d get teams running backwards. But it never really transpired that way and he was never able to properly establish himself.
An injury to Romelu Lukaku meant that Lucca was thrown straight in at the deep end — and also did not get the opportunity to play alongside the Belgian international. Napoli were also trying to fit another new addition, Kevin De Bruyne, into the team and were experimenting with a fluid 4-1-4-1, which was immediately a clunky system.
So much of what Napoli did during the 2024-25 season, when they were crowned Serie A champions, was based around players — most notably Scott McTominay — bouncing off Lukaku. This was absent from their play in Lukaku’s absence, and it was easy for people to say Lucca was the problem.
Before the window closed, Napoli signed Rasmus Hojlund on loan from Manchester United. He scored a clinical goal on his debut and stepped ahead of Lucca in the pecking order. When Hojlund came back from international duty in October with a knock, Lucca got a run of games. But Napoli lost against Torino, were beaten 6-2 by PSV — in a game in which he was sent off for dissent — and he didn’t score in a close game with Lecce.
Even when coming off the bench as a substitute, he has never managed to have that defining moment that can get a player’s career kick-started at a new club. He scored one goal in 16 Serie A appearances. Conte often refers to a line that his mentor, Pantaleo Corvino, would use, about being able to marry the wrong woman but managers not being able to sign the wrong goalkeeper or the wrong striker. In Lucca, Napoli had signed the wrong striker.
Lucca in Serie A action for Napoli last month (Francesco Pecoraro/Getty Images)
But that does not mean he will not be the right one for Forest. Nikola Milenkovic, the Serbian defender, played against Lucca during his time at Fiorentina — and regarded him as an awkward opponent. He is looking forward to being reunited with him.
“I played against him in Italy a few times. He is a really good player and, yes, a big guy. So we expect a lot from him, but also from all of our strikers. We have some good quality and we have to be happy with them,” Milenkovic said in a press conference before the 4-0 win over Ferencvaros.
While his time at Napoli was not a success, Lucca had previously built a reputation as a player with more technical ability and pace than you might expect from a player who will become the tallest striker in the Premier League. He is more of a classic No 9 than a target man; somebody who likes to make runs off the shoulder of the last man, as well as holding the ball up to bring others into play.
Lucca’s initial challenge will be to oust Igor Jesus from the Forest starting XI. The Brazilian has scored 11 goals in all competitions this season. Forest also have Taiwo Awoniyi to call upon, as last season’s 20-goal top scorer, Chris Wood, battles to recover from a knee injury.
Dyche hopes that Lucca — who was an unused substitute in the 1-1 draw against Crystal Palace — will bring some specific qualities.
Only Newcastle (615) have delivered more crosses into the penalty area than Forest (561). But at the same time 11 clubs have delivered more successful crosses than Forest (106), with the team’s cross accuracy rate of 18.89 per cent being the third worst in the division.
Lucca’s off the ball run types last season do not illustrate a player who got onto the end of many crosses for Udinese — but that is likely to be a reflection of their style of play, as much as his. At Forest, with the number of crosses they deliver, that will almost certainly change significantly.
“When you have invested a fortune in players who can deliver the ball into the box, it is nice to have a big player they can target. That is common sense,” said Dyche in his press conference ahead of tonight’s game. “That was a big part of why we brought him in, because he has a different profile and might be able to change the way we operate. You want players who can operate in different ways.
“Some days it is good to be able to have like-for-like replacements. Central defenders are a good example. The basics have to be done — you have to be able to head it and kick it, you have to be able to defend — and it is nice to have those similarities. With a centre forward it is different, you want different ways of working. During a game, it is helpful if you have different styles of players to call upon. That particularly applies to centre forwards.”
Some Forest fans have already affectionately labelled Lucca ‘Pizza Crouch’ in reference to the former Liverpool forward, Peter, another player more than two metres high.
If he can have anything like the same impact on the Premier League as Crouch — who scored 106 top-flight goals with six different clubs — it is a nickname that might just stick.
Additional reporting: James Horncastle
