The Legend of Clint Dempsey continues to grow at Craven Cottage.<\/p>\n
Just over a\u00a0month removed from\u00a0eclipsing Brian McBride’s record\u00a036 career goals scored by an American in the English Premier League, the former Revolution midfielder pulled the trigger three times in a 4-0 FA Cup tournament victory over Charlton Athletic on Saturday.<\/p>\n
Dempsey scored goals in the 12th, 61st and 81st minutes to earn his first hat trick in a Fulham shirt. It is believed to that the Nacogdoches, TX native is only the third American to capture a hat track in a high-level English fixture. Chris Cleary scored three for Workshop\u00a0against Droylsden in October 2004 while John Kerr, Jr.\u00a0– who also played for the Revolution (1996-97) –\u00a0netted a trio\u00a0for Millwall against Derby in a second-tier league match in August\u00a01994.<\/p>\n
The first strike came when Dempsey took a pass from Danny Murphy and buried it past Charlton Athletic keeper John Sullivan\u00a0with a right-footed finish in the 12th minute.\u00a0 His second score arrived after the hour when he grabbed a Bryan Ruiz ball and chipped it over Sullivan to\u00a0double the Cottagers’ lead in minute 61.<\/p>\n
Ruiz was brought down inside the box in the 81st minute, setting up a penalty that Dempsey coolly converted to put the bow on a match that the American import will not soon forget.<\/p>\n
During his time with the Revolution, Dempsey scored 25 goals in 71 games from 2004-06 and was named MLS Rookie of the Year in 2004.\u00a0The brazen\u00a0midfielder clocked in a two-goal performance against New York on Jul. 1, 2006.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Former Revolution midfielder\/forward Clint Dempsey scored a hat trick in a FA Cup tie against Charlton Athletic on Saturday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":8293,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[26,3],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/nesoccertoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/01\/Clint1.png?fit=439%2C275","jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8292"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8292"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8292\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8302,"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8292\/revisions\/8302"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8293"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8292"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8292"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8292"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}