Hearts in rage over manner of European downfall

Uefa had told Hearts off a few weeks ago when they attempted to play the music before the second qualifying round match against Sireki Brijog at Murrayfield. Use of Zadoc The Priest was permitted only for teams who qualified for the group stage, it said. On a stifling evening in Athens, AEK performed the last rites on that particular dream.

Few teams who have been beaten 5-1 on aggregate find reasons for complaint. Hearts, and in particular Vladimir Romanov, who launched an ungracious assessment of the Greeks, did. Some of it, such as the criticism of Iuri Baskakov, the Russian referee who sent off Julien Brellier and Neil McCann, was well-founded but much was ill-informed.

To state that AEK would not survive the group stage and that there was not a player in the Greek side that he would buy for Hearts smacked a bit of sour ouzo from the Tynecastle owner. Julio Cesar, whose two goals crowned AEK’s 3-0 second-leg victory to seal the third qualifying round tie, has skills and a dead-ball delivery that you would expect from any Brazilian. The plain truth is that AEK were the better side over 180 minutes — and outplayed Hearts at Murrayfield a fortnight earlier — even if the second leg was over as a contest from the minute that Brellier was sent off for collecting his second caution for elbowing Trianos Dellas and paying a heavy price for his first, which had been a failure to remove a tiny diamond earring.

That such a punitive booking had been issued for something so meaningless by someone from his home town was a stinging piece of irony for the millionaire Muscovite.

“AEK, on this performance, might not be able to compete at a high level in the group stages — certainly without a referee from Moscow,” Romanov said in a statement issued by his public relations executive. “We will be back in the Champions League if we can compete like that.

“Football is supposed to be what is happening on the field of play, not turned into a show thanks to the referee. I would stop my football investment if Hearts were ever to play in the fashion that AEK did here against us.”

There is little doubt that Baskakov gave a truly soft penalty in the 78th minute that allowed AEK to break the deadlock, when Deividas Cesnauskis tried to avoid Vasilis Lakis. However, given Cesnauskis’s own reputation for tumbling in the box, that was a case of past events coming back to haunt the Hearts midfield player.

Now Hearts have to make do with the Uefa Cup and will be in the first-round draw with Rangers today. Rather than nursing resentment at a missed opportunity, the Edinburgh side should look upon their elimination as a second bite at the cherry as Celtic did in 2002-03, when they made up for a Champions League exit by reaching the Uefa Cup final. This season’s final will be played at Hampden Park.

Hearts would now be better served analysing their selfinflicted problems. They had three players sent off in the two AEK games — Bruno Aguiar was dismissed for two cheap yellow cards at Murrayfield — and that ill-discipline, a feature of their domestic game last term, is even more costly in Europe.

McCann’s two-footed tackle left the referee with little choice and if Baskakov was at fault for not checking AEK’s players for jewellery as eagerly he did those of Hearts, the bottom line is that the blame lies with Brellier.

Valdas Ivanauskas, the Hearts coach, revealed that Baskakov had gone into the Hearts dressing-room to check the players’ jewellery but did not point out that there would be a problem with Brellier’s diamond stud earring.

The midfield player was booked when the referee noticed the stud 25 minutes into the game and was sent off five minutes later for using an elbow in a challenge with Vladimir Ivic.

“He checked to see if Julien’s fingers were bandaged but did not say anything about his earring,” Ivanauskas said. “He checked all of the boots and rings and spoke and laughed with Julien, then showed him the yellow card. It is unbelievable. It was such an important game for us. He made sure that it was over for us.”

However, of greater concern to Hearts has to be why the much-vaunted Tynecastle squad was so thin that Jamie Mole, a teenager, had to be used up front in Athens. The 18-year-old ran his heart out and performed well, creating one of just two chances that Hearts had, and his attitude and endeavour were in stark contrast to Edgaras Jankauskas, who came off the bench and was so apathetic that he gifted Cesar a third goal.

Pressley believes that Hearts can recover and carve out a future in the Uefa Cup. “I think we learnt a lot over the course of the four Champions League games, and I think we’ll become a better European team from them,” he said. “I thought we played with far more maturity tonight than in the first leg and that was encouraging for the team.

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“We have a lot of experienced players, but the younger ones will have learnt a lot from playing in European football. Now we have the Uefa Cup and it would be fantastic if we could make an impact in that, because I do believe that we’re capable of doing so.”

Pressley, though, feels that Hearts cannot simply abandon their natural style from the Premierleague when it comes to the Uefa Cup. “We are quite an aggressive team,” he said.

“I’ve not seen a replay of Julien’s incident but the referee said to me that he showed a straight red card in the end. That seems very harsh.”

Taken from timesonline.co.uk