PEC Zwolle have equalled the Dutch record for the biggest win in league history with a 13-0 obliteration of Den Bosch in the Eerste Divisie this evening.
The league leaders had seen their title charge slowed by back-to-back defeats heading into the contest, but they roared back to winning ways in the most emphatic manner possible.
Zwolle were 7-0 ahead at half time, and added a further six goals without reply in the second half to equal the biggest win in Dutch league history.
The only other team to record a 13-0 triumph was Ajax, who humiliated VVV Venlo by the same scoreline in an Eredivisie match in 2020.
Former Everton and Nottingham Forest striker Apostolos Vellios got the rout up and running with the fastest hat-trick on record in the Eerste Divisie, securing the matchball just 11 minutes and 22 seconds after the game began, including two in the opening four minutes.
Vellios then helped himself to his fourth of the night before the half-hour mark, by which stage Haris Medunjanin and Younes Taha had also joined him on the scoresheet.
A Thomas van den Belt goal made it 7-0 after 31 minutes, and perhaps the biggest surprise by that point was that it took Zwolle until the second half to score again.
Lennart Thy was one of three players to come off the bench at half time and netted within seconds of his introduction, before going on to register a hat-trick of his own with further goals in the 64th and 72nd minutes.
Thomas Beelen scored in the middle of that Thy hat-trick, before Van den Belt's second and a 91st-minute goal from Davy van den Berg capped off the evisceration and ensured that they equalled Ajax's record.
Den Bosch, who already had comfortably the worst defensive record in the division even before tonight's match, remain third-from-bottom in the Eerste Divisie table, while Zwolle are now the league's leading scorers and sit six points clear at the top.
Barney Corkhill
