Reasons to be cheerful

It may be loud in Athens on Wednesday evening but, says Michael Grant, reaching the Champions League group stage is not out of reach for the Tynecastle side

THERE used to be so much hooliganism at AEK Athens’ derbies against Olympiakos that the authorities once punished the clubs by moving one of their meetings to the distant island of Rhodes. On another occasion Uefa fined AEK because their supporters reacted to floodlight failure during a game by setting things on fire on the terraces so that they and the players could see what was happening.

The perceived wisdom is that Hearts are in for a rough ride when they play in Athens in Wednesday’s Champions League qualifier, but the hostility is easily exaggerated. The aforementioned events happened several years ago.

“Takis Fyssas told us that compared to Olympiakos and Panathinaikos, AEK’s supporters are generally more polite,” said Tynecastle striker Michal Pospisil. Their good manners will not extend as far as saying “after you” to Hearts at the doorway to the Champions League proper. Hearts will have to put up a mighty effort in what is the most significant fixture of the Scottish season so far but there is no need to regard their task as insurmountable.

AEK’s league season began only yesterday yet they seemed to be at the top of their game when winning the first leg 2-1 at Murrayfield while the opposite could be said of Hearts. They were comfortably outplayed by a team which looked stronger and more skillful but the fact remains that they were within minutes of winning 1-0 and would have had a better chance of completing that robbery had Bruno Aguiar not been sent off. “Everything changed with the red card,” said Pospisil. “I think we played deeper after that, more defensively. Maybe teams like AC Milan or Bayern Munich would have held on to the result and won 1-0 and that is because they are more experienced. In the first half we showed AEK more respect than was necessary.”

The contest cannot be written off quite yet. In the Uefa Cup last season AEK Athens drew 0-0 in Russia in a first leg against Zenit St Petersburg and expected to complete the job with a routine second leg victory in their 68,000-capacity Olympic Stadium. But Zenit St Petersburg snatched a 1-0 victory in the supposed cauldron of Athens and AEK were out (ironically Zenit will be playing Rangers in a friendly at Ibrox while Hearts are in Greece). Three days after that setback AEK lost at home again, 3-1 in the league to Olympiakos. Hearts face a daunting task on Wednesday, but AEK are not worthy of so much respect that it should be confused with having to win in the Nou Camp or San Siro.

Having listened to what his Greek team-mate Fyssas had to say, Pospisil made the valuable observation that Hearts would have to be especially well organised and disciplined because a deafening backdrop of 40,000 screaming Athenians may make it difficult for the players to communicate on the pitch. There is the consolation that a running track means the supporters are too far removed from the pitch to throw anything other than insults. “Hopefully that will help us and it will be less intimidating,” said Robbie Neilson. “It is always difficult for a referee in a stadium where the fans are baying for blood and trying to get on his back, but hopefully the referee will rise above that on Wednesday.”

If the stadium will not justify the inevitable “welcome to hell” stories which can be expected in the days before the game, Hearts nevertheless will be up against opposition which was devilishly impressive at Murrayfield. Hearts, used to imposing their superior physical size and strength on SPL opposition, were surprised to be outdone in that respect. “They are all physically strong but also comfortable on the ball,” said Neilson. “It was a big step up in class for us. It was an eye-opener for a lot of the boys, that good European teams aren’t just good on the ball they are also physically strong as well.

“In the SPL we are usually the team that is a bit bigger than everyone else and try to intimidate teams and get in about them. I think it worked in reverse in the first leg, they were bigger and physically stronger than us. So it shows we have to work at other aspects of our game as well. But I don’t see why we can’t still do it. I said even before the first leg that we would probably have to score a goal in Athens and now we will have to score two. It is going to very difficult for us but we didn’t play anywhere near the level we can in the home game so hopefully we can go over there and, with the pressure off, turn it on.”

Hearts will have to win 2-1 to take the game into extra-time or by two clear goals to join Celtic in Thursday’s draw for the group stage proper and the £6 million that would pour into owner Vladimir Romanov’s accounts. Elimination would bring the safety net of dropping into the first round of the Uefa Cup in September but Neilson almost curled his lip at the thought. “The Uefa Cup has lost a bit of its shine over the last few years. I know it’s still a big tournament but the big teams don’t really want to play in it, they want to play in the Champions League where all the big games are and all the money is. We have to focus on getting ourself into the Champions League proper.

“We worked hard for the whole of last season. There was a lot of pressure on us at the end to get the second place and reach the Champions League. We can’t let that go easily. We have to work hard and try to get through. It was a full season’s worth of hard work to get here.”

If his latest comical ramble to the media was anything to go by, Romanov might blame everyone from forthright former player Lee Johnson to ex-manager Graham Rix or “impotent” Glasgow media puppets if Hearts fail to survive in a tournament he once predicted they would win within three years. But his post-mortem will have to wait. Not even Hearts’ verbally incontinent owner will be able to make himself heard in Athens.

Taken from the Sunday Herald