28/2/2015. HMFC 10 CFC 0. 

The above is scrawled on the match ball from that memorable Championship encounter between Heart of Midlothian and Cowdenbeath. It's underlined twice for emphasis.

Down to the left is Osman Sow's signature. Just to the right is what appears to be Callum Paterson's autograph. Not only is there his signature but a very Scottish message: 'The big man'.

The ball sits on a stand inside a glass case complete with Hearts crest.

It belongs, of course, to Genero Zeefuik. Owner of the three-minute hat-trick.

The Dutchman sent through the image, proof that he still had the ball in his possession. It was followed by another photo of another bit of memorabilia, a shield personalised for him as a winner of the SPFL Championship 2014/15 with nine separate plaques for each of the nine teams Hearts faced in the second tier that season with the scores of each game.

Zeefuik's Hearts memorabilia. (Image: Genero Zeefuik)

In a Championship season where Hearts set a new points record under Robbie Neilson, the most unforgettable figure was a loanee who arrived halfway through the season. Arriving on January 8, Zeefuik joined a Hearts side who were unbeaten after 19 league games and held a 13-point lead over Rangers. 

"Genero gives us a different option up front, is really strong, physical and can hold the ball up and link well with others," Neilson said on his signing. “He has played at some big clubs in Holland and has scored a lot of goals for his country at U21 level. He will be a threat for us and a good option in attack. 

“He will allow us to get back to playing two up front again if we want which we haven’t been able to do with the injuries we have had. For the last five or six weeks we have been struggling striker-wise for numbers as some of the guys haven’t been quite ready. 

“He wants to do well, we want him to do well and we look forward to getting him in the team. He has been playing in the reserves for Groningen so is fit and ready to go but might take a couple of games to get up to first-team match fitness."

Zeefuik did well. He did very well.

Two days after arriving he scored a double on his debut in a 5-1 win over Dumbarton. Ten more goals would follow, including that three-minute hat-trick and another brace, this time against Rangers at Tynecastle Park.

It remains player's fondest Tynecastle memory.

"Last game of the season v Rangers," Zeefuik told Hearts Standard. "Went 2-0 behind. Scored two times, 2-2, and held up the trophy after the match".

Three of Zeefuik's 12 Hearts goals came against Rangers (Image: SNS)

Now 34, Zeefuik is back in the Netherlands and retired.

When Hearts Standard reached out to him via WhatsApp an instant automated message replied: Bedanky dat u contact opneemt met Génerozeefuikacademy. Laat ons weten hoe we u kunnen helpen.

It was a thank you for reaching out to Genero Zeefuik Academy. Before long the man himself would reply and the interview was not the orthodox type but a flurry of messages back and forth, including the aforementioned images.

Zeefuik is a coach in the Ajax youth ranks and runs his own soccer academy. He has been retired for a long time. His last appearance in professional football came back in 2017, as a late substitute for FC Emmen against former club NEC in the play-offs of the Dutch second tier.

He remains a player who fascinates fans. A player with a 'what if?' tag attached to him. What if Hearts had kept him going into the Premiership campaign? 

After all, in the club's 150-year history, 209 players have scored 12 or more goals. Only nine have a better goals-to-games ratio than Zeefuik. The most recent of those nine was Tommy White between 1963 and 1965. The caveat is that Zeefuik's goals arrived in the second tier. Still, it was a brilliant return.

Neilson wanted him to stay beyond his loan spell but there were reports that parent club Groningen wanted £300,000 for his signature.

“Genero is a player that we’d like to keep, but it has to come within our budget,” he said at the time.

“That’s just being prudent. Genero has had a great season but we’re only a year on from administration and the doors nearly being shut, so we still have to live within our means. The ball is in Genero’s court and Groningen’s. He still has years left on his current deal with Groningen and they paid a lot of money for him and are looking for some kind of return.

“The figures being bandied about did not come from Groningen. We’ve been up front by saying that we’re not going to spend a lot of money on players.”

Hearts would go on to sign Juanma Delgado while Zeefuik headed to the Turkish second tier, joining Balikesirspor.

But he wanted to remain at Tynecastle Park.

"Of course I wanted to stay at Hearts," was the blunt answer. "I was top scorer on the team, fans loved me and the team was great.

"But unfortunately the club didn't work it out with FC Groningen."

The move to Turkey would signal the beginning of the end of a career that had promised so much.

Zeefuik's career began in the youth system of Dutch giants Ajax but it was at rivals PSV where he emerged via Almere City. His status in Eindhoven grew quickly owing to becoming the third youngest player to feature for the club, given his debut before his 17th birthday by Ronald Koeman in 2007.

Within a matter of days, there was interest from Liverpool. The teams met in the Champions League quarter-finals and discussions were had about the teenage forward.

Toward the end of the season, Koeman fined Patrick Kluivert after the former Barcelona striker labeled his decision to bring on a 17-year-old Zeefuik ahead of him as "embarrassing".

Loan spells would follow as PSV sought the player to gain first-tem experience. In 2009 he performed so well back at Almere to the point clubs in the Netherlands were interested in signing him.

PSV would not talk "about selling".

The club's recruitment and scouting manager Adrie van Kraay said: "Genero is doing really well this season. His talent is obvious, he has a bright future ahead of him. But our precise plans with him also depend on the new coach.

"In any case, we have to be careful not to let a talent leave too early. We made that mistake ourselves in the past with Klaas Jan Huntelaar and Roy Beerens, for example."

By 2011, he was back in the first-team fold, impressing head coach Fred Rutten and was expecting to sign a new deal that summer. He was bullish about his prospects.

"Whoever my competitor will be, it is up to me to show that I am better than him," he said. "It's that simple. When I first joined PSV, I had one goal: to become the first striker. Now, four years later, that goal still stands. And I plan to make it happen this year. I must and will become PSV's first striker."

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However, a loan to NEC would follow. Again, his form caught the eye of clubs around the country. NEC wanted to keep him, Heerenveen were interested but it was Groningen who swooped in triggering his buyout believed to be around £400,000.

By November 2012 he had slipped out of the manager's thoughts due to not being fit enough, manager Robert Maaskant wanted him to focus on training, going "full throttle" to get to where he wanted him to be faster.

 "We have given Genero a certain trajectory in recent months and he has not complied with that. We believe that he is not fit enough at the moment to bring what we expect of him for 90 minutes.

"That is not his fault," Maaksant said, noting Zeefuik didn't cut corners. "He even does extra work and I see the results of that on my phone every day. But if that does not produce the desired effect, I as a trainer have to intervene to get the player better.".

Working with a personal trainer, Zeefuik lost 5.5kg.

"I saw that people wanted to help me," he said of that time. "The intentions were good. The club could have abandoned me. Like: figure it out for yourself, Género.'

"I've been boxing and cycling a lot. They've also looked at my diet. I did sports fasting for about three days. I got supplements, powders and pills, which made me not hungry anymore. That was an alternative to the regular meals."

Come the summer his future looked like being away from Groningen, the team he chose after consulting Virgil van Djik and Leandro Bacuna. He was linked with clubs in Austria and Turkey and a transfer to Willem II fell through.

He wouldn't move until he ended up at Tynecastle Park in January 2015.

Zeefuik's arrival in Gorgie can be traced back to another striker who joined from Dutch football.

"Mark de Vries great legend of Hearts," he explained when asked how the move came about. "They asked him if he knew another Dutch striker in Holland and then gave my name. Hearts contacted my agent that's how it happened."

The first impression was of a "great club" inside and out and the supporters who "were great".

Zeefuik was different from anything the team had in attack. His build raised eyebrows but as soon as he started playing  his talent was evident.

At the time of his signing, Sean McKirdy was part of the first team.

"He came in and in the nicest way possible he never looked that much like a footballer and then you watched him and thought, 'This guy is actually decent'," McKirdy told Hearts Standard.

"Technically he was really, really good. The ball would come to him and stick. No one would get near him, people would bounce off him. His close control was unbelievable.

"I think he surprised everyone. Everyone thought he was a bit different because that season it was a lot of pacey forward players - Sam Nicholson, Billy King, Osman Sow. He did not look like he was going to amount to much and then straight away you could tell, actually, this guy is really, really good."

Zeefuik was a big hit with fans. (Image: SNS)

Zeefuik puts his success at Hearts down to the environment. He had found a club, team and manager that suited him and allowed him to thrive. Not to mention a fanbase that appreciated him.

Nearly 10 years after playing in the maroon-and-white he still receives messages from supporters on social media.

"We had great defenders, midfielders, attackers - a top team," he said. "That made it easier for me and they made me feel at home quickly

"With Robbie, he was great to work with. He gave everyone the confidence that when we had scored two or three times he always wanted more, to make it five or six."

Zeefuik was a laidback presence, both on the pitch and away from it. It is a quality that appeared to help him deliver on the pitch.

"He didn't train all the time," said McKirdy, who remembers Zeefuik being one of the first players to congratulate him after making his league debut.

"He was one of these guys who would be in and out. I mean that in the nicest way but it looked quite effortless to him. I'm sure he was putting in 100 per cent effort but it didn't look like he was putting in that effort. He would be pretty static but know where to be.

"It was almost like the bigger the game the cooler he was, so unfazed, almost horizontal with it all. You would see guys have their pre-match routine and before bigger games, they were quite amped up but he was almost like this means nothing to me. It's so chilled out."

Would he have been able to replicate his form in the top flight? McKirdy believes so.

He explained: "It's not an exact comparison but someone like [Lawrence] Shankland, there are bits of his game where people will say, 'That's missing, maybe that's missing' but it just doesn't seem to affect him because he is a really, really good footballer as well as knowing how to score goals."

Unfortunately, Hearts fans were never able to find out.

(Image: SNS)

Within two years of scoring a memorable double against Rangers at Tynecastle Park, Zeefuik played his final competitive game.

Then, in 2020, the player took to Instagram to speak about his conditioning during his professional career and why he ended up stepping away from playing. 

"It's been three years now, but my substitution against NEC is on many people's minds," he wrote, referring to being ridiculed for his weight when at FC Emmen.

He would reveal he had been dealing with pancreatic problems during his career.

“The media spoke about my obesity and critics said I didn't take top sport seriously. Ever thought there could be more behind it? Everyone looks at you and has an opinion but doesn’t know the background.

“I was known as a promising striker. From PSV's youth academy, I ended up at Emmen via Dutch clubs, Heart of Midlothian and Balikesirspor in Turkey.

“Due to pancreatic problems, my body reacts differently to the way a healthy athlete's does.

“I quit football.  The period that followed was extremely difficult for my relationship and my children - people no longer recognised me as the husband and father that I was.

“One mental blow after another was handed out and I lost myself completely.

“I love football and sports. Although I no longer have a club, I am busy getting fit.

“I am speaking out about this so people know there are not always choices, certainly not when it comes to health. This happened to me, like so many other athletes and young footballers. I'm looking at how we can help children who encounter similar problems."

Zeefuik revealed to Hearts Standard that he didn't find it a difficult decision to stop. The decision to pick up his phone, write out that message four years ago and lay his personal details out in the open was far more uncomfortable

"For me, it was okay," he said. "Too much happened in soccer. I no longer had fun, then it's best to quit.

"There were a lot of people talking a lot of nonsense and I was just done with it, for me it was hard to say.

"Actually, I didn't want to say it but thought have to say it."

Nine years after his time in Edinburgh, Zeefuik is back home coaching the next generation at Ajax and through his youth academy while he gets to see his brothers Deyovaisio and Lequincio continue their own professional careers at Herta Berlin and AZ Alkmaar.

Hearts remain a key memory from his own career. For Hearts fans, there will also remain a 'what if?' question around if he had stayed.

But an indelible mark was left. His debut against Dumbarton, his three-minute hat-trick, the double against Rangers and one of the best goal ratios in the club's 150-year history.