"Three finishes, and the game was gone"
Joel van Kempen's hat-trick inside a dominant Utrecht performance turned a routine Eredivisie afternoon into a demonstration of a striker who knows exactly where the goal is.
Three finishes, and the game was gone. Joel van Kempen's hat-trick at Stadion Galgenwaard was the difference between Utrecht's control and Roda JC's resistance, and it was the sort of display that decides matches long before the final whistle.
Utrecht had 69% of the ball and 17 shots, but the scoreline was built on Van Kempen's ruthlessness: five shots, five on target, three goals. Josip Dönhöfer covered 13.7km and Joan Miquel Torres completed 79 of 87 passes, but it was the striker's finishing that turned possession into a 5-1 win. "He makes the hard part look simple," Dönhöfer said afterwards. Roda's Francisco Javier, a centre-back, scored his side's goal; Jan Duits came on at 51 minutes and provided the assist. Van Kempen's rating of 9.4 told the story of an afternoon in which every chance fell to the right man.