Utrecht pushes Heerenveen deeper into trouble with victory in moderate match | Eredivisie

After Vitesse came to Stadion Galgenwaard last week in mediocre form, and left with a point, SC Heerenveen was already an opponent that has lost its way for FC Utrecht tonight. Heerenveen did not take a single point in 2022, lost five times and, together with the Austrian Altach, is the only club scoreless this calendar year in the top ten competitions in Europe. Heerenveen also lost in 2021, as a result of which the series of defeats was already at six and is therefore seven after tonight. Six was already a new negative club record for the Frisians.

But on the other hand: Utrecht itself also lost five of its last seven away games. There is certainly no such thing as a constantly rotating whole. The chagrin was also on top after Vitesse’s equalizer last week in injury time – and the club is also not known for easily imposing the will on struggling opponents. Despite a better Utrecht, the first half was sloppy, with a few pinpricks on the part of the visitors from the constantly whistled Henk Veerman, who made the switch from Heerenveen to the Domstad last winter.

After Fabian de Keijzer made a nice save just after the break on a bet by Amin Sarr, it was Bart Ramselaar who did score on the other side. He took advantage of goalkeeper Erwin Mulder’s hesitating performance and scored his seventh Eredivisie goal of the season – and his 22nd in the FC Utrecht shirt. With that number, he is on the same level as Gert Kruys and Ricky van Wolfswinkel on the club’s eternal top scorers list.

After last week, the point was to ‘kill’ the match. Mike van der Hoorn seemed to take care of that with a good header twenty minutes before the end. That was not counted on a Frisian final offensive, because ten minutes before the end Sydney van Hooijdonk was allowed to score a penalty after Van der Hoorn’s hand. Van Hooijdonk scored his first Eredivisie goal, 14 years and 318 days after father Pierre’s last. Utrecht faltered, shivered, but held on and recorded a liberating victory. After all, Twente and Vitesse already won earlier in the weekend. The gap with Vitesse remains limited, one point. Twente is six points out of sight.

More important: the drivers behind Cambuur and NEC are now six and eight points away. Moreover, the teams behind Utrecht in the ranking show anything but continuity. There is also a good chance that place eight is already enough for a play-off spot. In other words, it must be very strange if Utrecht does not qualify for the seasonal dessert in which it concerns a European ticket.

Although it can also reasonably be expected from Utrecht that the play-offs are a certainty, this season experienced a considerable phase of setback. It was certainly not unthinkable for a long time that Cambuur, say, would seriously interfere with Utrecht. And although Utrecht still performs differently, it at least took an advance on the play-offs tonight with the victory in Heerenveen. That offers some renewed confidence towards the last ten games of the regular season.

SC Heerenveen’s loss against FC Utrecht meant the seventh consecutive defeat in the Eredivisie and the eighth in all competitions. The Frisians only ever recorded a longer league loss series in the then Second Division between January and March 1967: nine in a row.

There is therefore certainly no question of a shock effect after the departure of trainer Johnny Jansen, who was fired after four Eredivisie defeats in a row. Under interim coach Ole Tobiasen, the Frisians also did not take a single point in four games. SC Heerenveen is in thirteenth place in the Eredivisie, six points ahead of the number sixteen, Fortuna Sittard. Next Saturday, Tobiasen’s team will play a spicy game at Willem II, which is classified as fifteenth, also a club in crisis, with thirteen defeats in the last fourteen Eredivisie matches. And the following week, a match against pursuer RKC is scheduled.