Claudio Braga admits he has no idea if he will still be a Hearts player come the end of the summer window. The flurry of speculation linking the Portuguese ace to Ligue 1 big guns Lyon among others earlier this month has calmed and no concrete offers have arrived yet there's still a huge question mark hanging over the future of the Gorgie fans' favourite.
But if punters are looking for answers Braga can give them one for certain - he still feels right at home at Tynecastle. And that will remain the case until a deal that is right for both himself AND the club falls into place.
Braga on his future
Braga's head may have been on a swivel in the last two months as the revolving door at Tynecastle saw 11 first team stars exit and another full squad arrive in their place as the Jamestown recruitment tool did its thing. That's not to mention the departure of the man who led the Jambos to the very cusp of the Premiership title in May - Derek McInnes - to take up the reigns at a rival.
Then there was the brutal blow of seeing his Champions League dream turn into something of a nightmare this week. The forward cut a frustrated figure in the immediate aftermath of the 2-0 home defeat to Sturm Graz that cemented a 6-0 aggregate humbling. Suddenly that quartet of player of the year awards that followed his 17-goal season and the sensational title tilt at Tynecastle just a couple of months ago must feel like a distant memory.
Braga admits the intensity that drove the Jambos to within minutes of the Premiership title last time out has been missing from Wouter Vrancken's side so far. But bring that back and, together with the brand of football the new boss is instilling, the 26-year-old sees no reason why the Jambos can't fly high again this season. Whether he is around come the end of it.. well that remains to be seen.
Asked if he expects to still be a Hearts player when the window shuts at 5pm on September 3, Braga said: “I have no idea about that. I told this to everybody: if I go away it's got to be something good for me and for the club - it's never going to be something only good for me. So yeah, of course, I like to be here. I feel good here, and then the rest, let's see.”
He added: “I feel everybody wants to do well. The style of play last year, you look a little bit more for the intensity in the game, and the focus was more on the intensity in the game and everything. This year is more like the tactical part. The way we try to play good football and create a lot of chances, which we do. We create a lot of chances, it's just we didn't take them against Graz. The intensity, I think it needs to get a little bit better than it is. But I think we are playing good football and we can do good things.”
Champions League dream dashed
Braga has spent most his life fantasising about appearing on the Champions League stage only for the dream to die in the space of a week. The 6-0 aggregate scoreline was a harsh lesson in the standards required even just in the qualifying rounds. Chances spurned and powderpuff defending saw Graz stomp all over Vrancken's undercooked Hearts.
And while Braga knows there's no time to feel sorry for themselves with a massive Premiership opener at Aberdeen up tomorrow night, he reckons it was a huge opportunity missed. He said: “Yeah definitely. Of course, it was a different game when you know you lose 4-0 in the first half. We need to take our chances a little bit better. When we make mistakes against these teams, you just get punished. That was one of my biggest dreams when I was a child. You dream about playing in the Champions League. Even though it was play-offs, it's Champions League anyway, and now that it's over. We just can't think a lot about that, and we have Aberdeen to play next, and that's the only thing we need to focus on.”
He said: “I think we are ready for that. If you see the Sturm Graz games, it's not because we play worse than them, it's because we committed a lot more mistakes than them. You pay for the mistakes against these teams. I feel like it's early of course, it's a lot of changes, a lot of new players, completely different style of play from what it was last year. It's hard to deal with all that in a small period of time, but we are paid to do this, so we should be able to do it. Most parts of the game we did it, with the message of the coach, and then it's just individual mistakes from our part, individual players, that we just need to not make.”
