Van Persie: I didn't expect to break Kluivert record against Hungary

Posted Saturday, October 12, 2013 by Goal.com

The 30-year-old has admitted his surprise at shrugging off a pre-match injury to score a hat-trick in Netherlands' 8-1 thrashing of Hungary on Friday night

Robin van Persie has admitted that he had his doubts over whether he would even feature for the Netherlands against Hungary on Friday, let alone break Patrick Kluivert's Oranje goalscoring record.

The Manchester United forward went into the tie two goals behind the former Barcelona star's tally and netted a brilliant hat-trick to take the record in his own right.

But Van Persie, who was subbed off an hour into the match, admits he had only discovered he would play a few hours before kick-off.

"I didn’t expect to play actually. We took a small gamble," the 30-year-old told SBS6.

"It went better the last days with my toe. This morning we decided that I would play an hour. I didn’t expect that it would go like this."

Van Persie was quick to shift praise onto his team-mates, while admitting he was not thrilled with how he started the match.

"In the first five minutes, I lost two balls. I was not happy with that. But the team reacted well and we didn’t concede goals from it. After the first ten minutes, we showed really good football.

"The greatest moment of the night was my second goal. The pass from Arjen [Robben] was brilliant. It was a floater. I only had to give the last touch with my head. The first one was a bit with my shoulder.

"When I was a young boy, I was good with headers. After that I let it slip a bit. It wasn’t a weapon of mine. In the last couple of years, I trained more with my head. That has worked for me. You can see that now.”

Netherlands complete their 2014 World Cup qualification campaign with a trip to Turkey on Tuesday.