Pavel Šulc has just enjoyed the season of his life. Lyon’s new €7.5 million signing from Viktoria Plzeň, won the prestigious Czech Golden Ball (Zlatý míč České republiky), becoming the first Czech based player to do so for ten years.
The award, which is given to the best Czech player of the season, was voted for by a panel of 45 Czech sport journalists over two rounds – one in late Autumn and a second in Spring. Šulc finished ahead of two previous winners in West Ham’s Tomáš Souček and Bayer Leverkusen’s Patrik Schick in the poll.
In winning the Golden Ball, the 24-year-old follows in the footsteps of luminaries such as Pavel Nedvěd, Patrik Berger, Tomáš Rosický and Petr Čech. That’s the calibre of player to have dominated this award since its inception in 1997 and if Šulc can reach anywhere close to their level then Lyon have got a real player on their hands.
Bohemian upbringing
Pavel Šulc was born in the spa city of Karlovy Vary in the west Bohemia region of the Czech Republic. He grew up playing youth football locally until he was scouted by Viktoria Plzeň aged ten and he joined their academy some 80 km to the south of his home town.
Šulc progressed steadily through the age groups, developing into a promising attacking midfielder. By 2017 he had caught the attention of the national team scouts and was included in the Czech Republic U-17 squad. He earned his first cap in a friendly against Belgium and went on to represent the U-18s several times the following season.
The 2018-19 season represented something of a breakthrough for Šulc. He began it in the Viktoria Plzeň U-19 team, who were competing in the UEFA Youth League. In a tough group, they came third behind Real Madrid and Roma but ahead of CSKA Moscow. Domestically, he was banging in the goals in the Dorostenecka liga (the top-tier youth football league in the Czech Republic), scoring 10 in 14 matches before the winter break.
Those performances earned him promotion to the first team squad and he featured in a couple of friendly matches during their January training camp before being sent out on loan to second division outfit Vysočina Jihlava to gain experience. He went straight into the first team there and helped sustain their promotion push during the second half of the campaign. They finished second but ultimately missed out on promotion via the play-offs.
Long list of loans
Šulc’s upward trajectory was also reflected on the international front where he became an automatic pick for the Czech U-19 team in European Championship qualifiers. He even made his debut for the U-21 side in a post-season friendly against neighbours Slovakia.
Once again there was no space to be found for Šulc in the Viktoria Plzeň squad for the 2019-20 campaign, so he was sent out on loan. Initially he wound up at SFC Opava, for whom he made his top flight debut aged eighteen on the opening day of the season. They won their first two matches but thereafter a 14 game winless run sent them tumbling to the bottom of the table.
He didn’t return there for the second half of the season as his parent club opted to recall him and re-loan him to Ceske Budejovice, who were competing at the right end of the table. However, the Covid-19 pandemic caused a hiatus in Czech football before he’d had a chance to really get going at his latest club. The league was suspended when he’d only made three substitute appearances for Ceske Budejovice.
Around ten weeks later it was deemed safe enough to resume the fixture list and Pavel Šulc soon found his way into the starting line-up. On the penultimate matchday he scored his first goals in the Fortuna Liga with a brace against Teplice. Ceske Budejovice finished seventh but missed out on Europa League qualification via the play-offs.
Still surplus to requirements in Plzeň, Šulc returned to South Bohemia for the beginning of the 2020-21 season, but his second loan spell with Ceske Budejovice was disrupted by injury and more Covid lockdowns so he only made four appearances. In January he returned to Plzen and finally got the chance to make his competitive debut for Viktoria.
Czech Champion
The team was struggling in the lower reaches of the table and they threw him straight into the starting line-up. Šulc responded with some stellar performances that helped sustain a long unbeaten run which saw them climb up to fifth by the end of the season. They also reached the Czech cup final but had to settle for runners-up medals, losing 1-0 to Slavia Prague.
Pavel Šulc had his first taste of international tournament football in early Spring 2021 when he represented the Czech U-21 team at the U-21 Euros in Slovenia. The drew with 1-1 with both Italy and their hosts before losing 2-0 to Spain in the crunch match and exiting the competition at the group stage.
Now aged twenty, Šulc began the 2021-22 campaign as a starter for Viktoria Plzeň and they negotiated two rounds of UEFA Europa Conference League qualification in the summer before losing out to CSKA Sofia at the final hurdle. They won their first four league games of the season but Šulc then found himself relegated to the substitutes bench following the arrival on loan of national team midfielder Jan Sýkora.
However, Šulc did continue to feature regularly off the bench during the closing stages of matches and he appeared in all but four games of the regular season campaign in which Plzeň finished second, one point behind Slavia Prague. That qualified them for the championship play-off and they stormed to the title with four wins and a draw in the six team mini tournament. It was the first major honour of Šulc’s career, although disappointingly he only featured in one of the play-off games.
Blossoming under Koubek
Viktoria Plzeň failed to defend their title the following season, and maybe that’s in part because their coach, Michal Bílek, still didn’t have faith in Pavel Šulc and sent him out on loan again. This time his destination was Jablonec, where he enjoyed his most prolific season to date, scoring five times as the club finished 11th in the table.
Post season there was another trip to the U-21 Euros, this time hosted in Georgia and Romania. Playing in Group C, the Czechs met eventual champions England in their opening fixture and lost 2-0. A 2-1 victory over Germany in the second game brought them back into contention but they lost 1-0 to Israel in the decider and again finished third in the group.
A change of coach at Viktoria Plzeň over the summer brought Miroslav Koubek to the helm for his third spell in charge at the club. He realised that Šulc was finally ready to step up the task of orchestrating their attacking play. Generally deployed as a number ten, Šulc responded with a breakout season in 2023-24. He played 49 times in all competitions and scored an incredible 22 goals, with eight assists to boot.
That stunning improvement helped carry Viktoria Plzeň to third place in league, to the quarter-finals of the UEFA Europa Conference League, and all the way to the Czech Cup final. That final was a memorable one for Šulc, but for the wrong reasons as he was sent off for a second yellow card in the 85th minute. They were a goal down to Slavia Prague at the time and they did equalise two minutes after his dismissal but conceded again in injury time, so a cup winner’s medal eluded him once more.
International debut
Of course, his eye-catching performances hadn’t one unnoticed by national team boss Ivan Hasek and Pavel Šulc made the natural progression from the U-21s to the full national squad when he received his first call-up in March 2024. His Czechia debut came in a 2-1 friendly win against Norway in Oslo where he played on the left side of the front line.
He was included in the squad for the Euro 2024 finals in Germany and started the opening Group F game against Portugal, playing 79 minutes of a 2-1 defeat. However, he was overlooked for their subsequent two matches and they failed to make it out of the group.
The question back home in Plzeň was whether he could repeat his impressive goalscoring form in the new season and maintain the high standard that he had set. The answer was emphatically yes. He was ever present for Viktoria Plzeň in their 2024-25 league and Europa League campaigns, making a total of 54 appearances, scoring 20 goals and recording 15 assists.
Those performances earnt him the Player of the Season accolade in the Czech First League (known as the Chance Liga for sponsorship reasons), as well as the aforementioned Golden Ball. His 15 league goals made him second top scorer behind his former team mate Jan Kliment, now at Sigma Olomouc.
MUACOL Meetings and international goals
Four of his goals came in the Europa League, where they finished 16th in the league phase to qualify for the knockout rounds. Viktoria Plzeň won three and drew three of their league phase matches with their only two defeats coming at home to Manchester United and away to Athletic Club. They eventually went out against Lazio in the last 16 despite a Šulc strike temporarily giving them the lead in the second leg in Rome.
Šulc was by now established as a regular starter for the Czech national team and he helped them top Group 1 of the UEFA Nations League B in the autumn. His first international goals came in a 3-2 win against Ukraine in September. His third was the opener in the final group fixture, a 2-1 victory over Georgia in November in which his future Lyon team mate Georges Mikautadze scored for the visitors. Appearances in the World Cup qualifiers this spring took him to a total of 14 caps and 4 goals at the time of writing.
Move to Lyon
He began the 2025-26 season as a Viktoria Plzeň player and helped them get past Servette in Champions League qualifying. He got a goal and three assists in their opening two Chance Liga fixtures before the move to Olympique Lyonnais materialised. His Lyon debut came as a late substitute in the opening Ligue 1 game of the season away at Lens. He came off the bench at the same time as his compatriot Adam Karabec in a double substitution replacing Fofana and Mikautadze. Lyon held on to complete a 1-0 victory.
Pavel Šulc’s first start for Lyon came the following weekend at the Groupama stadium in a 3-0 win against Metz. He played on the right side of attack but regularly drifted infield to allow Maitland-Niles to overlap. It was some neat footwork and a pass from Šulc that allowed Fofana to open the scoring in the 25th minute, thus registering his first assist in French football.
A polyvalent player, he is comfortable on either side of the front line as well as playing in the centre as a conventional number ten. At twenty-four, he still has the potential to improve even further and will hopefully help to fill the massive hole left in the Lyon attack following Rayan Cherki’s departure to Manchester City during the summer.