Tottenham Hotspur’s potential Harry Kane replacement enhanced his growing reputation with another hat-trick as the Premier League-linked centre-forward ran riot for Eredivisie champions Feyenoord at Excelsior.
To think, it could have been a game remembered for a Miss of the Season contender from Feyenoord’s Mexican marksman, Santiago Gimenez scooping over the top with the goal at his mercy.
It’s testament to the striker’s rock-solid self-confidence, then, that Gimenez ensured his first-half sitter would go down as little more than a setback on another glorious afternoon, the Tottenham Hotspur target netting a second treble of the season with a little help from his Feyenoord friends.
Tottenham Hotspur’s Harry Kane replacement?
Gimenez was glowing in his assessment of Feyenoord’s Newcastle United loanee Yankuba Minteh at full-time, the jet-heeled teenager setting up his second of the day after Igor Paixao had assisted the first. Gimenez’s third, however, was all of his own making. A wriggle and a shimmy opening up a yard of space before a fortunate deflection took his remarkable goals tally to 18 from just 16 appearances in 2023/24.
“He knows where to be. When you see the first goal, he is in exactly the right place. It is often just a feeling. An instinct,” Roy Makaay, himself a former Feyenoord frontman, tells ESPN.
“If he continues like this, he will make a nice transfer next summer. I think it would be wise for him to first go to a club just below the top. To continue to develop there.”
18 goals in 16 Feyenoord games
A club like Tottenham, perhaps.
According to Gimenez’s agent, Spurs have shown an interest. Another member of the 22-year-old’s camp, meanwhile, have indicated that Ange Postecoglou’s side are the ‘closest’ to securing his signature as things stand. Albeit, along with Real Madrid.
And after a weekend in which Spurs were left rueing the absence of a reliable number nine, missing chance after chance as Aston Villa smashed and grabbed their way to three hard-earned points, Gimenez’s latest hat-trick performance will not have gone unnoticed in North London.
Receive exclusive football transfer news and updates twice a week to your mailbox
