Luca Netz is the answer to a question Nottingham Forest supporters have been asking since Oliver Glasner walked through the door: who plays left wing-back? The Reds’ No.25 is the only specialist left-sided defender in the senior squad, and in a 3-4-2-1 that asks its flanks to do more running than anybody else on the pitch, that makes a 23-year-old German the most quietly important squad player at the City Ground.
Who is Luca Netz?
Netz was born in Berlin on 15 May 2003 and came through the academy at Hertha BSC, the club he had supported as a boy. He was fast-tracked hard. Hertha handed him a Bundesliga debut while he was still 17, making him one of the youngest players ever to appear in the German top flight for the club — the sort of billing that arrives with a warning attached, because a teenager who plays senior football that early usually spends the next few years being judged against a version of himself that does not exist yet.
He is a left-back by trade, left-footed, and built for the modern version of the job rather than the old one: aggressive in the attacking half, comfortable carrying the ball, and a genuine deliverer from wide areas and set pieces.
From Hertha Berlin to Borussia Mönchengladbach
In the summer of 2021, Borussia Mönchengladbach paid a fee reported at around €7m to sign him — a striking outlay for an 18-year-old full-back, and one that told you how highly German football rated him. Gladbach are not a club that spends that kind of money on potential alone.
What followed was the education Forest are now benefiting from. Netz spent four seasons in the Bundesliga, a league that plays at a higher tempo and with more open space than the Premier League’s mid-table, and he did it in a period when Gladbach cycled through coaches and systems. He played as an orthodox left-back, and he played further forward. He was dropped, and he won the shirt back. By the time he left, he had well over 100 senior appearances behind him and was still only 22.
How Luca Netz joined Nottingham Forest
Forest signed him in the summer of 2025 for a fee reported at the time to be in the region of £10m. The logic was straightforward: the Reds had accumulated a lot of right-sided and versatile defenders and had no natural, left-footed specialist on the other flank behind Neco Williams, a Wales international who can and does play on either side.
Netz took the No.25 shirt — the full list is in our guide to Nottingham Forest’s squad numbers for 2026/27 — and settled into the role of the understudy who is one injury away from a run of games. Three head coaches later, he is still here, which in a squad that has seen the turnover Forest’s has is itself a form of endorsement.
What kind of full-back is he?
Netz is an attacker who defends rather than the other way round. His best work happens in the opposite half: overlapping runs, early crosses from deep, and a left foot reliable enough that he is a standing option on corners and free-kicks. Coaches who like their left-back to be the width in a possession structure tend to like him a lot.
The flip side is the one that has followed him since Berlin. He is not the biggest defender in the division and his one-on-one defending has been the part of his game that most needed hardening — which is precisely what a decade of Premier League wingers will do to a player, for better or worse. He has also had his fitness interruptions along the way, as most full-backs who sprint 11km a week eventually do.
The profile is, in short, the mirror image of Ola Aina, whose game is built on recovery pace and who happens to be left-footed while playing on the right. Forest have a lot of full-backs. They do not have two of the same kind.
Netz in Glasner’s 3-4-2-1
This is where it gets interesting. Glasner’s system — explained in full in our breakdown of the head coach’s 3-4-2-1 — does not use full-backs. It uses wing-backs, and there is a meaningful difference. A wing-back in this structure is the team’s only source of width on his side, is expected to be the highest player on the flank in possession, and is expected to get back and make a back five out of a back three when the ball turns over.
Forest built for that this summer. Daniel Muñoz arrived from Crystal Palace on deadline day, a wing-back who thrived in this exact system under this exact coach. On the left, Neco Williams remains the incumbent, and Aina can cover either side.
Netz’s case is that he is the only one of them who is genuinely a left-sided specialist, and the attacking half of the wing-back job — the crossing, the set-piece delivery, the instinct to be high and wide rather than tucked in — is the half he is best at. In a Forest side still searching for goals, that is not a small argument.
Germany, and what comes next
Netz has represented Germany through the youth age groups up to Under-21 level, the standard route for a player of his generation and rating, without yet breaking into the senior squad. At 23 that door is not closed; it simply requires a run of Premier League football to open it.
Forest are still waiting for a first win of 2026/27 after the goalless draw with Tottenham Hotspur at the City Ground and the 2-2 at Liverpool, and Glasner has spent the early weeks of his reign trying to make the wing-back berths produce. The Reds travel to Aston Villa at Villa Park now the September international break is over.
For Netz, the season is a simple proposition. The position he plays is, in this system, one of the two most important attacking roles in the team. He is the only natural left-footed specialist competing for it. If Glasner decides he wants maximum width and delivery from that flank, the No.25 is the player who provides it — and a career that began with a Bundesliga debut at 17 finally gets the run it has been waiting for.
Squad and fixture information is published by the club on the official Nottingham Forest website, with appearance records for every top-flight player on the Premier League site and German league records at Bundesliga.com.
