Pressley hails Hearts victory as his proudest moment

PAUL KIDDIE

HEARTS captain Steven Pressley today hailed the Jambos’ famous UEFA Cup victory over Braga, insisting the triumph is the proudest moment of his career.

Two goals from Mark de Vries in last night’s first round, second leg clash in the Estadio Municipal earned a 2-2 draw, the Tynecastle side roaring through to the money-spinning group stages 5-3 on aggregate.

The Portuguese triumph will stand as one of the club’s greatest achievements and today Pressley admitted it is an experience which will be remembered by all those involved for years to come.

"It’s the proudest moment of my career," he said. "Everyone has great memories of the 1998 Scottish Cup final but I came to Hearts the summer after that and although I have had some great times here, this has to be the finest achievement I have been involved in. It was one of the greatest nights I have had with the club. It was a fantastic achievement for the players, coaching staff and the supporters. In fact everyone connected with the club. It was a massive night for us all.

"To be involved in the lucrative group stages is superb and can only enhance our reputations while bringing in some much-needed cash.

"We will remember this for a long, long time. The performance and result in Bordeaux was terrific but in the end we went out of the tie over the two legs.

"We came to Portugal with a very difficult task in front of us but carried it out superbly and now can look forward to more big games this season."

Hearts will now go into Tuesday’s draw eagerly awaiting to discover who they will be welcoming to Murrayfield. They face two home ties and two away games and with three teams progressing from the group, Pressley is confident of even more success.

"We attracted almost 19,000 to Murrayfield for the first leg and I am confident that with the right draw, we can bring in nearly 25,000," he said. "I don’t care who we get now - just being in the group stages is superb. Regardless of who we get, I think we will cause them problems, particularly at home.

"Three teams progress from the five in the group and I am confident we can make an impact."

Braga boss Jesualdo Ferreira was damning in his opinion of Craig Levein’s side after his team lost the first leg 3-1 at Murrayfield.

Levein didn’t miss Ferreira in his after-match summing-up last night and Pressley admitted his dismissive talk helped spur his players on to glory.

"The Braga coach made us angry. We have a group of very honest players and he spoke very badly about us," said the Gorgie skipper.

"We proved ourselves to be a good side in the first leg but he still put us down. He said we gave football a bad name and that they were definitely going to go through.

"At the end of the day he has walked away with his tail between his legs and we are delighted as we were hurt by his comments. We were aware of everything he said and the manager spoke to us about it before the game.

"He showed great arrogance and while they may be technically superior to us it doesn’t make them a better team and we proved that over the two legs."

Pressley and his defenders were immense in a magnificent team effort in Braga and he didn’t allow the loss of a 12th-minute goal to knock them out of their stride.

He said: "Even had we gone 3-0 down we knew we would still be in the tie and we came back well from losing the early goal. Mark got a terrific opportunist strike to put us in pole position.

"From then on we looked very comfortable and Braga didn’t really carve out many clear cut chances.

"When the second goal went in the tie was finished. We just had to be professional and see out time and were sure we could do that.

"I told Mark before we went out at the start that he had to show great courage and that he was going to be a huge player for us on the night. We desperately needed him to perform and he didn’t let anybody down."

Levein praised the supporters for their backing last night, saying: "They were again there in their numbers and it was great to see and the players really appreciated it. Hopefully they had a good time, behaved themselves and did Scotland proud."

Security chief Tom Purdie, who had been concerned beforehand about the potential of trouble form local casuals knows as the "Red Boys of Braga", also praised the visiting fans’ behaviour.

"There weren’t any problems and everyone had a great time and behaved themselves which was good to see."

Taken from the Scotsman