Antonio Nusa came off the bench for RB Leipzig on Saturday and set up a goal within a minute, which says a lot about the season the 21-year-old is having and why Arsenal’s interest in him isn’t going away.
That assist against Augsburg was his seventh in the Bundesliga this season, on top of four league goals. Across all competitions he has six goals and eight assists in 15 games, already career-best numbers for him before the middle of November.
Arsenal want another wide player, and Nusa is the name that keeps coming up. So who is he, how does he play, and would he actually fit at the Emirates?
Who is Antonio Nusa?
Nusa is a Norway international winger, born on 17 April 2005 in Langhus. He holds Norwegian and Nigerian citizenship, and he plays mainly on the left, though he can also play on the right.
He joined RB Leipzig from Club Brugge on 13 August 2024 and is under contract until 30 June 2029. Transfermarkt values him at €45m, a figure set back in October, before his latest run of form.
He already has 34 caps and nine goals for Norway. One of those came at the World Cup this summer, a curler in the 39th minute of the 2-1 round of 32 win over Ivory Coast.
Antonio Nusa youth career and background
Nusa started at his local club, Langhus IL, before moving to Stabæk at the start of 2018. He came through there before Club Brugge signed him, for a fee that started at €3m and later rose thanks to a resale clause.
Leipzig then signed him from Brugge. His first two seasons in Germany were steady rather than spectacular, with six goal involvements in 2024/25 and seven in 2025/26. This season he has more than doubled that already.
Antonio Nusa style of play
Nusa is a direct, one-v-one winger. He is right-footed and plays on the left, so his first instinct is to drive at the full-back, go past him and either cut inside or find a runner. Bundesliga tracking data clocks his top speed this season at 35.18 km/h.
What has changed this season is the end product. His first two seasons in Germany were light on goals and assists. Now he is the first player in the Bundesliga to reach ten goal involvements this season, and he scores penalties as well.
His coach, Martín Demichelis, has not held back. “In my opinion, he’s one of the best wingers in Europe right now,” he said earlier this season, and after Nusa scored and assisted in the 2-0 win at Schalke he added: “It’s difficult to stop him.”
Strengths
- Beating his man: he wants the ball to feet and keeps taking defenders on, which pins full-backs back.
- Creating for others: seven Bundesliga assists in nine games is a serious number, and the Augsburg one, a pass into Christoph Baumgartner straight after coming on, showed how quickly he can change a game.
- Big-game moments: a World Cup knockout goal and the equaliser against Manchester City in the Champions League on 4 November, a low finish across goal from Christopher Nkunku’s pass.
- Penalties: he scored the one he took at Schalke, so he isn’t just a creator.
Weaknesses
- A short track record: this is one very good season after two ordinary ones. The jump is huge, and nobody can be sure yet that it is the new normal.
- Workload: before the Augsburg game Demichelis said “Antonio is at his limit” after a heavy run of games, and Nusa started on the bench. He is 21 and has played a World Cup summer and a full autumn.
- Not much in the air: he has won only four aerial duels in the Bundesliga this season, so he offers little at the back post or from goal kicks.
Antonio Nusa stats this season
Bundesliga 2026/27, official league figures as of 9 November 2026 (after Matchday 9):
| Stat | Total |
|---|---|
| Appearances | 9 |
| Goals | 4 (1 penalty) |
| Assists | 7 |
| Shots on goal | 18 |
| Crosses | 6 |
| Sprints | 171 |
| Distance covered | 70.2 km |
| Top speed | 35.18 km/h |
| Yellow cards | 2 |
Across all competitions, that becomes six goals and eight assists in 15 games. Only six crosses tells you he prefers to carry the ball or play it short into the box rather than hang it up.
Antonio Nusa potential and fit at Arsenal
The need is clear. Arsenal sold Gabriel Martinelli and Leandro Trossard in the summer, Christos Tzolis is the only new natural wide option, and Eberechi Eze has been doing a job on the left without being an out-and-out winger. With Bukayo Saka still out, Noni Madueke has been carrying a lot of the load.
Nusa would give Mikel Arteta a proper left winger who goes past people and now adds goals and assists. He also knows Martin Odegaard well from the Norway set-up, and the Arsenal captain is on Norway duty again this week.
The problem is the price and the timing. Leipzig have him tied down until 2029, they don’t need to sell, and as we wrote last week, a January deal looks very hard. Every assist pushes his value further past that €45m figure.
Verdict: Nusa is the winger Arsenal have been missing
In our view, Nusa is the best fit on the market for what Arsenal lack right now: a quick, direct left winger who is young enough to keep improving and already producing at a high level.
The one thing we would want to see is the form holding up through the winter. If it does, Arsenal should be ready to pay what Leipzig ask in the summer rather than risk losing him to someone else. Nusa said it himself after the Schalke win: “I train a lot. I believe in myself, but this is only the first step.”
