There was one name on the lips of the London Stadium faithful when Czech billionaire Daniel Kretinsky secured his £180 million 27 per cent stake in West Ham United on Wednesday afternoon – Adam Hlozek.
Top scorer in the Czech top flight last season with 15 goals in just 23 games, 19-year-old Hlozek continues to back up his reputation as perhaps the most talented player to emerge from the Eastern European nation since a young Tomasz Rosicky.
With The Telegraph reporting that Kretinsky is keen to set up a partnership between West Ham and Sparta Prague, it would probably be more of a surprise, at this stage, if Hlozek did not join forces with David Moyes at some point over the next few months.
West Ham were heavily linked with Hlozek over the summer, after all, with FootMercato claiming that the London giants were confident of fighting off competition from the likes of Liverpool, RB Leipzig and Borussia Dortmund.
With Kretinsky on board now, West Ham have just gone from likely candidates to odds on favourites.
“(Leaving) is possible,” Hlozek’s agent said at the time. “The amount (reported in the media, £15 million) is very real.”
Kretinsky is not the only one who would relish the prospect of seeing arguably Czech Republic’s most exciting footballer in a generation blossom into a Premier League-quality centre-forward in claret and blue.
According to The Athletic, Czech teammates Vladimir Coufal and Tomas Soucek have both recommended Hlozek to West Ham.
If the teenage forward can emulate the impact of Coufal and Soucek in London’s East End, that would be £15 million very well spent.
Is Czech star Adam Hlozek the striker David Moyes needs at West Ham United?
“We would have liked to have brought in someone who could directly replace Mich during the window but we just could not find anyone,” Moyes told Football London in September, frustrated at the club’s failure to sign a striker capable of easing the burden on their injury-prone talisman Michail Antonio.
The fact that Andriy Yarmolenko appears to be Moyes’ third-choice centre-forward at present speaks volumes about his wafer-thin squad.
“We have to try and find other ways of doing it and bringing other people who in we think can score goals in a different way,” he said.
“Keeping Mich fit is really important for us, we will not play him in all of the games but will try and use him at the right times.”
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