Demirovic scores hat trick in 12 minutes as Stuttgart downs Viking 3-1 in Champions League

Ermedin Demirovic scored a hat trick in 12 minutes as VfB Stuttgart put the game away before halftime: 3-1 over Viking at the MHPArena in matchday one of the Champions League league phase. What looked like an even contest blew wide open in a wild quarter-hour, between the 19th and 31st minutes, when virtually everything that mattered happened.

Viking had given a warning before the opening goal: Kristoffer Askildsen tested the keeper twice from outside the box, and Henrik Bjordal got in front of his marker in the six-yard area but couldn't find the target. But it was Stuttgart that struck first. In the 19th minute, Angelo Stiller set up Demirovic, who finished low from close range to make it 1-0. Viking's response came almost immediately: just two minutes later, Zlatko Tripic leveled things with his left foot after a cross from Henrik Bjordal, making it 1-1.

That's when Demirovic's show began. In the 25th minute, he received a through ball from Deniz Undav and finished through the middle to make it 2-1. Then in the 31st, set up again by Undav, he struck for 3-1, a goal that needed a VAR review before it was confirmed. In barely 12 minutes, the forward had flipped the match on its head with three goals.

Dominance that didn't translate into more goals

With the 3-1 scoreline holding into the break, the second half was far more congested. Stuttgart kept creating chances, with Undav clipping the crossbar in the 64th minute and hitting the post in the 93rd, while attempts from Chris Fuhrich, Grischa Promel and Jeff Chabot also failed to find the net. Viking, for its part, had its best spell at the start of the second half, with shots from Bjordal, Peter Christiansen and Henrik Heggheim that likewise caused little alarm. The score didn't change again.

The stats confirm the total control the German side exercised over the 90 minutes, even if the shots-on-target column ended up even:

The xG generated in the match, our own estimate calculated from the shots taken, backs up that superiority: 2.93 for Stuttgart against 0.75 for Viking. A wide gap that reflects the volume of clear-cut chances the home side had, five to the visitors' one.

What the preview said

Before kickoff, our projection was far more even than how things actually played out: we gave Stuttgart a 35% chance of winning, 24% for a draw and 41% for Viking, with expected goals of 1.76 for the home side and 1.90 for the visitors. Reality turned out radically different: Stuttgart didn't just win, it did so with a conviction nothing in the preview foresaw, carried by the finishing of a single player.

The win leaves VfB Stuttgart with 3 points after its opening match in this Champions League campaign, sharing the top of a table that's still tightly bunched, where almost every team that won its first match has the same total. Viking, meanwhile, is left without points and with a negative goal difference after its debut. With just one match played by each side, the standings still don't say much, but the match itself left a clear picture: once Demirovic gets going, he's very hard to stop.