Christian Pulisic showed the full package with his perfect hat-trick in Chelsea s 4-2 victory against Burnley, according to head coach Frank Lampard.
United States international Pulisic scored with his left foot, right foot and his head to give Chelsea a three-goal lead in Saturday s Premier League clash at Turf Moor.
Willian added a fourth goal before Jay Rodriguez and Dwight McNeil pulled a couple back for Burnley in the final five minutes, but the Blues saw out a seventh successive win in all competitions.
Lampard lavished praise on Pulisic after the match and is hopeful his hat-trick hero will take confidence from scoring his first goals in English football.
The moment became our youngest player ever to score a Premier League hat-trick!
— Chelsea FC (@ChelseaFC)
The way that he s trained over the past few weeks and the impact he s had when he s been playing has said to everyone here I am and what talent he does have, he said at his post-match news conference.
I m really pleased for him today, it s what we need from all our attacking players to be a threat, to play like that, to have a ruthless edge about how they finish. He showed the full package today.
The first goal, where he waits, then a step over, then moves away from the players. That sort of thing is brilliant and I hope it gives him the confidence that it should do. I m pretty sure that it will do.
Pulisic s treble in Lancashire was even more special given it was his first Premier League start since August, the 21-year-old even failing to make Chelsea s matchday squad for a Champions League clash at Lille earlier this month.
He featured for USA at the CONCACAF Gold Cup in June and Lampard said he was keen to further manage the youngster s playing time on the back of a £58million move from Borussia Dortmund during the close season.
21y 38d Christian Pulisic today became s youngest hat-trick scorer in Premier League history, beating Tammy Abraham s record that stood for 42 days. Escalation.
— OptaJoe (@OptaJoe)
I m absolutely delighted for him, Lampard said. A lot of talk around Christian for the big price tag, for the fact he s quite rightly a star in his country and plays for the USA so well.
From my point of view, I m delighted to see him do that today because I know the backstory, I know the pressures of a move like that.
I also know he played for his country through the summer and had a one-week break this summer. Then you get the pressure of can you settle in the Premier League so I ve tried to deal with it in the way that I see best, which is to give him minutes.
He fully deserved his start today and it was a fantastic match-winning performance.
became just the second American player to score a hat-trick, after in January 2012
— Premier League (@premierleague)
Chelsea were awarded a penalty with 15 minutes to play when Callum Hudson-Odoi went to ground under pressure from James Tarkowski, only for VAR to overturn referee Michael Oliver s decision.
Hudson-Odoi was booked for simulation and was criticised by Burnley boss Sean Dyche for his ridiculous antics, but Lampard hit back at the criticism of his young forward.
If I felt like it was a dive I would speak to Callum and say that s not what we re about, he said. But when you re moving into the box at pace and cutting across defenders…
I thought there were a lot of things going on in the game today of people going down under not real contact.
If it was a dive I d address it, for sure. I need to look at it back but I don t think it s as clean cut an argument as that.
