Kei Kamara notched the first hat trick of his MLS career on Saturday night, scoring the first three goals in the New England Revolution’s dominant 4-0 home win against Orlando City SC.
On Tuesday, he received a little love for the performance, when it was announced that the 33-year-old striker was voted Alcatel MLS Player of the Week by the North American Soccer Reporters (NASR) for Week 26 of the 2017 season.
Kamara got things started early for New England on Saturday, volleying home from close-range in the 26th minute after a nice give-and-go on the right wing between Lee Nguyen and Scott Caldwell.
He doubled the Revs’ advantage in the 75th, picking out Nguyen at the top of the box and running onto the midfielder’s deflected return pass in the center of the area before slotting past Joe Bendik.
Kamara completed his hat trick in the 89th. He took advantage of some sloppy play by Orlando defender Leo Pereira to get behind the Lions’ backline, then raced into the right side of box and buried his 1-v-1 opportunity with Bendik.
The three-goal performance was the first of Kamara’s 11-year MLS career. He now has 11 goals and four assists in 24 games this season, and has 97 goals and 37 assists in 279 career regular season appearances.
Their win on Saturday moved Kamara and the Revs past Orlando and Philadelphia and into eighth-place in the East. They’re four points behind sixth-place Atlanta and seventh-place Montreal, who they’ll host on Saturday at Gillette Stadium (7:30 pm ET | MLS LIVE in the US, TVA Sports in Canada).
The Alcatel MLS Player of the Week is selected each week of the regular season by a panel of journalists from NASR. The group consists of members of print, television, radio and online media.
