Hearts are the next Scottish club up for Europa League action and will have to overcome a confident Dinamo Zagreb to progress.

With Dinamo Zagreb drawn to meet Hearts in the Europa League the gentle sparring between the respective coaches has begun. The coaches will have secured DVDs of their opponents recent games and called in favours from colleagues in their black books to get the dossier started ahead of their first meeting on 20 August. Zagreb coach Krunoslav Jurcic believes his side are in the mood to show they should not have lost to Red Bull Salzburg in the Champions League qualifying round which meant they dropped into the Europa League. The Croatians are full of confidence that they are good enough to see Hearts off over the two legs. Zagreb will welcome Hearts on 20 August before meeting again at Tynecastle seven days later. The winners of the tie will then move intothe inaugural tournament's lucrative group phase.

Hearts play their first SPL game of the season, against Dundee United, a week on Monday and it is expected that a very interested spectator will be Jurcic. Nothing like seeing a team in the flesh to get a good idea of how they play and react to developments in the game. It will then be back to Zagreb to brief his players on what he saw.

Juric said: "It's hard to talk right now about their strong and weak sides. Every opponent at this level has some quality. Hearts went directly to this level of preliminary, that means they have a good rating. Scottish football has a good rating in UEFA club competitions. I know the Scottish league starts next weekend, so Hearts are in preparation phase right now. I'll have time for more detailed scouting in the next days, but I can say that we'll approach these matches full of self-confidence and confident in success. We also have a quality and it's most important to be disciplined on match day. If we do, every other thing is less important. With all respect to Hearts and Scottish football, we want to hope that we will win and go in the Europa league. The players are not happy that we lost to Red Bull. Now we are working to restart the potential of players before Salzburg and to start again with our level of play."
Editor
Ger Harley (ger@scottishfitba net)

Admin Team (admin@scottishfitba net)

This is Scottish-Fitba Net