THE Austrian top flight used to be awash with bargain imports from the Hungarian league.
But nowadays Thomas Flogel looks around and has to rack his brain to think of a single one. That is just one reason why the former Hearts midfielder confidently expects the Edinburgh side to prevail in tonight’s Europa League third round qualifying first leg against the unheralded Paksi SE.
The other reason resides in the opposing dressing room. Amazingly, this is the first European adventure for Jim Jefferies and Billy Brown since Flogel featured in a narrow away goals defeat to VfB Stuttgart back in 2000.
Hearts lost the first leg 1-0 in Germany then won 3-2 at Tynecastle, but were left ruing a late Gordan Petric miss which could have given them quite a scalp. Considering it is Jefferies himself who has twice gone over to scout Paksi, you can rest assured it is something he is taking rather seriously.
“It is a little bit surprising it has taken him 11 years to be back to the European stage,” Flogel told Herald Sport. “So I can imagine that he is desperate to get back in there. It is a special thing to play in Europe and it is good for Hearts to be back in there.
“I remember that last game very well,” added the Austrian, who these days runs an agency which develops young players and manages a third tier Viennese side called Simmering. “It was a very close game at Tynecastle, with Sean Dundee scoring a couple of goals. A few years later he played with me for Austria Vienna and we often talked about this game. We had the big chance with Gordan Petric five minutes before the end. Stuttgart went on to become Champions League mainstays but it was very close and we were a little bit unlucky.”
Much has changed since then, of course. “It is a different era right now,” he said. “But I think Hearts have a good balance between young and experienced players and against this Hungarian side I feel Hearts have a very big chance. I think they are much the better team and the Hungarian league quite simply isn’t good enough -- I am not sure how much competition there is there.
“Normally Hungarian players come to Austria but I don’t think we even have one any more. Quite simply, I just don’t think this team is good enough to beat Hearts.”
Paksi may have a team of relatively unheralded Hungarian players but they upset Norwegians Tromso in the last round, and are already half a dozen games into their season. The first leg will be played at the home of Videoton and Hungarian teams have caused Hearts problems in the past.
Then manager John Robertson was so irked by the way things went against Csaba Laszlo’s Ferencvaros at Murrayfield in the 2004 Uefa Cup that he extended a sneaky leg in the direction of the showboating future Scottish manager of the year and sparked something of an international incident.
“He said I was crazy,” said Laszlo at the time. “But I said he was crazy and that he must teach his players to play fair. He then kicked me in the leg, which was not nice.”
In any case you could say it was not one of the great European trips. Hearts will have to be on guard to avoid any further slip-ups tonight.
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