Everton hammered Austrian side ATV Irdning 22-0 on Saturday afternoon.
Whilst England’s World Cup campaign was ending with a 2-0 defeat to Belgium in the third and fourth place play-off, Everton were enjoying a quite bizarre afternoon in Austria.
Toffees goalkeeper Jordan Pickford again started for England, and he missed out on Everton’s remarkable 22-0 win over Austrian side ATV Irdning, who play in the fifth tier.
Kevin Mirallas hit five goals, Cenk Tosun hit four, Oumar Niasse hit four, Ademola Lookman bagged himself a hattrick and Nikola Vlasic scored twice whilst Leighton Baines, Michael Keane and Mason Holgate also scored, with a comical own goal also adding to the tally.
Some of the goals were bordering on the ridiculous, particularly one of Vlasic’s goals where the Irdning goalkeeper quite literally turned away from the ball and walked away from his goal, allowing the Croatian to stroke the ball into an unguarded net.
New manager Marco Silva won’t have learnt much about his side against such weak opposition, but he will at least have been pleased to see Lookman thrive.
The 20-year-old forward struggled for playing time last year and ended up joining RB Leipzig on loan for the second half of the season, showing his quality with five goals and three assists in 11 games.
Lookman is now back with Everton, and whilst he has been heavily linked with a permanent move to Germany, he bagged an easy hattrick against Irdning on Saturday.
Fans were obviously not getting too carried away against such weak opposition, but do think that Everton must do everything in their power to keep Lookman at Goodison Park, backing him to thrive in the upcoming season.
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