The “exceptional” Adam Hlozek scribed his name into Czech football folklore with a record-breaking hat-trick on Sunday.
And, if West Ham United fans were wondering what all the fuss was about, wonder no more.
With 16 minutes on the clock, the Sparta Prague wonderkid set the ball rolling against SFC Opava. Showing remarkable strength, Hlozek outmuscled a defender at the back post and absorbed a crunching aerial challenge before powering a clinical header into the net.
A second-half tap-in doubled his tally before Hlozek completed a ruthless treble, turning on a sixpence and firing into the bottom corner. Aged only 18, the teenage striker became the youngest player to score a hat-trick in Czech top-flight football.
Did we mention he also set up Slavia’s other strike in the 4-2 win?
“He scored three goals and I think he also enjoyed the match. He was exceptional,” Sparta Prague manager Pavel Vrba said of his history-making frontman, via iSport.
“I’m excited about the win and the hat-trick,” adds the man himself (iSport). “I think all the goals were nice.”
It had been something of a frustrating season for Hlozek, his development interrupted by injury.
His one-man destruction of Opava felt like a classic case of making up for lost time, with the Czech Republic international taking his personal tally to eight goals and eight assists in 2020/21.
According to 90Min, Hlozek is open to joining West Ham this summer too, despite interest from Bayern Munich, Juventus and Borussia Dortmund.
It’s no coincidence he shares an agent with fellow Czech stars Vladimir Coufal and Tomas Soucek, who both made the switch from Prague to London in 2020.
If ‘agent Soucek’ can work his magic again, one of Europe’s most exciting, record-breaking strikers could be wearing claret and blue next season.
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