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Sparta Rotterdam has done excellent business in the Eredivisie. Fortuna Sittard was expertly pushed aside at Het Kasteel: 4-0. Arno Verschueren opened the score on behalf of the Rotterdam team in the first half. After the break, Sparta continued to a big victory thanks to a double by Tobias Lauritsen and a nice final chord by Camiel Neghli. Thanks to the three-point goal, Sparta is on par with Fortuna and is therefore still in the race for European football.
Fortuna started the match weakly and the first big opportunity was for the home team. After five minutes, shots from Verschueren and Shunsuke Mito were blocked by the Fortuna defense. After that the game went back and forth a bit, without any danger being created for either goal.
That ultimately resulted in the opening goal for Sparta. After half an hour of play, a corner kick from Pelle Clement was cleverly headed in at the first post by Verschueren: 1-0. It was already the fourth home game in a row that the Belgian scored for the Rotterdam team. Before half-time, Verschueren was also close to his second goal, but his header was cleared just before the goal line.
The visitors performed considerably better in the second company, resulting in Kaj Sierhuis's first attempt between the posts. His effort became easy prey for Sparta goalkeeper Nick Olij. Ten minutes later, the Fortuna striker was again close to scoring after a quickly taken free kick, but his effort went wide of the goal.
Shortly afterwards, however, it was Sparta that doubled the lead. In the 58th minute, Lauritsen was nicely served by Djevencio van der Kust. The tall Norwegian ran into the low cross like a real striker and made it 2-0. Fortuna was unable to recover from that blow.
Trainer Danny Buijs did everything he could to get Fortuna back on track with a quadruple substitution, but that was also to no avail. Striker Sierhuis was even of great value at the back, saving Lauritsen's header on the line and preventing a bigger deficit. However, the Limburgers already seemed to have lost real belief in a result.
In the final phase, Sparta still managed to achieve a big victory. Lauritsen took advantage of a shot in the Fortuna defense, after which Neghli put the final score on the board with a hard shot: 4-0.
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