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Nottingham Forest striker Lorenzo Lucca endured a rotten six-month period at the City Ground, scoring a single goal and failing to impress Sean Dyche, Vitor Pereira or the fan base.
Lucca was added to the ranks to bolster Dyche’s archaic style of football that involved spamming aimless crosses into the box, with his 6ft 7in frame supposed to help the team.
The Italian never really looked like cutting the mustard at the City Ground, and it was no surprise when the Reds chose to end his loan and send him back to Napoli during the summer.
Now, Lucca is in the press again after he’s been causing quite a stir at Napoli following a bit of a dispute with a legendary former Premier League winner.
Deeney was covering some Champions League football for CBS Sports over the weekend, and he was asked about Napoli and, in particular, an on-field spat between Lucca and Kevin De Bruyne.
Porto thrashed Napoli 4-1 and during the game there was a disagreement between Lucca and the serial trophy-winner, with Deeney unsurprisingly taking the side of the Belgian.
He said: “The Napoli dressing room is split in two. On one side are the Italians; on the other side are the players who are from the rest of the world. There’s Hojlund, who doesn’t share his manager’s views, and then there’s Lucca, who, with all due respect, is lucky to be a footballer. He’s one of the worst strikers I’ve seen.
“He told Kevin De Bruyne, who has won everything there is to win in club football, to F*** off. Unbelievable. Honestly. Stop looking around and talking and work hard. It’s the only thing you have to do.”
Deeney lauded Liam Delap at the weekend, and he’s got this spot on about Lucca, with the player always appearing to have a bit of a hot head when he was at Forest.
Thankfully, Lucca didn’t perform well during his loan spell, and there was never any danger of the Reds wasting money on signing the shot-shy Italian on a permanent basis.
It’s quite remarkable that he’s still getting chances at Napoli, and surely there is no chance that he finds himself as a Premier League footballer at any point in the future.