Hearts searching for a minor miracle in Champions League qualifier
As well as world champion footballers, Spain’s gift to the game includes a word for a dramatic comeback or turnaround: Remontada.
Hearts manager Wouter Vrancken used the term at Tynecastle on Monday. He is preparing for as stiff a challenge as any of his predecessors faced in what is only his second competitive match in charge.
Hearts supporters, of all supporters, might find it hard to believe in the existence of football miracles. One is nevertheless required to take place against Sturm Graz at Tynecastle on Tuesday if the club’s Champions League qualifying ambitions are to be maintained.
Pierre Landry Kabore trains ahead of Hearts' clash with Sturm Graz.placeholder image
Pierre Landry Kabore trains ahead of Hearts' clash with Sturm Graz. | SNS Group
The brutal reality of football was reinforced to beleaguered Hearts fans in Austria last week. Despite not playing badly, Vrancken's side were punished for slackness in defence en route to a 4-0 defeat – three of the goals were conceded in a disastrous nine-minute spell at the start of the second half.
The Hearts faithful could certainly use a famous night at Tynecastle. It was hoped that the last time they played a competitive match at the stadium might turn into one of those. All it needed was a Celtic defeat in Motherwell combined with a home win over Falkirk.
Hearts did what they had to do to clinch a first title since 1960 and beat the Bairns 3-0 but a brutal sting in the tail awaited at Fir Park, where Celtic earned all three points with a contentious late penalty. It meant home supporters drifted into the night knowing their team still had it all to do at Parkhead in the final league game of the season. Avoiding defeat in the east end of Glasgow on such a high-stakes occasion is a tall order. And so it proved. Scoring four goals without reply, as Hearts must do against Sturm Graz simply to force extra time, might be an even greater task.
There is precedence, from Barcelona to ….Dunfermline. Worlds collided in 2017 when the Catalan giants turned a Champions League tie on its head against Paris Saint-Germain – a 4-0 away loss was followed by a 6-1 win in the Nou Camp - to be rewarded with a message from the East End Park side. “Congratulations guys,” it read. “Fancy a friendly for saying sorry for taking our record?” The "record” in question was the time the Pars roared back from a 4-0 loss away to Valencia in the 1962-63 edition of the Fairs Cup with a 6-2 home win over the Spanish side on a bitterly cold December's night in Fife.
“What a night it was at Dunfermline – a night of unbelievable happenings,” wrote John Rafferty in the following morning’s The Scotsman. “It was a pity only 15,000 saw it but those who did will talk about it for a long time to come.”
Sadly, even these heroics were not quite enough. The advent of the away goals rule was still a few years away so the tie headed for a play-off on neutral territory in Lisbon, which Dunfermline lost 1-0. From a standpoint of nearly 65 years later, this seems like a minor detail.
Six players could make their Hearts home debuts
The important takeaway is that overturning a four-goal deficit is possible, even if Dunfermline’s secret weapon – according to newspapers, Jack Frost played a blinder – won’t be lending Hearts a helping hand on a humid evening in late July. Neither will last season’s leading goalscorer Lawrence Shankland be around to plunder goals. Cammy Devlin, so often an inspirational figure in midfield, is also otherwise engaged in Govan. As many as six players could make their home debuts against Graz.
A new Hearts are attempting to post what would stand as one of the greatest results in the club’s history. On top of this is a manager who is still finding his feet. What kind of performance will it require? “Pretty close to perfect, especially in terms of efficiency,” Vrancken replied. “When you want to make up four goals, everything has to go right, particularly in both boxes.
“You have to be really clinical in both boxes when you want to score four goals without conceding one," he added. "That's the most important thing. I think between the boxes we were pretty good, even in Graz, despite the result. But if you want to have a historic night, then everything has to be almost perfect in the boxes.”
Graz manager Fabio Ingolitsch can almost afford to be a tourist on this trip to Edinburgh, as so many visitors are at the time of year. “Hearts have to give everything from the very first minute,” he smiled. “I think it will give us spaces – perfect for us.” His opposite number knows there is zero margin for error.
“It's difficult when you're four goals behind,” noted Vrancken. “But we have to go for a magical, historic night. That's the aim because you can't go into a game and just play the game. We have to go all in. In football and in sport, you never know what's going to happen, so we have to believe in that scenario. We also want to perform well and take confidence into the next games.”
Hearts kick off their league season in Aberdeen on Saturday night. If they fail to progress against Graz, as we must assume will happen, they will face either Benfica or St Gallen in the Europa League play-off round. It doesn’t get any easier.
Asking Vrancken if he has any experience of overturning large deficits was an obvious question. The 47-year-old Belgian obliged with a memory from the 2023/24 season, when at Genk. Playing a derby against Sint-Truidense, the team he later joined a manager, his charges at the time endured a nightmare period where they lost three goals in just six first-half minutes. Trailing 3-0 at half time, Genk scored three times in the second half to rescue a point.
“That was a little bit of a ‘remontada’,” Vrancken nodded. The trouble is that Hearts require a very big remontada.