Cercle Brugge v Hearts: Barry Anderson reports from Belgium

Edinburgh Evening News Hearts' correspondent Barry Anderson is in Brugge ahead of the Jambos' UEFA Europa Conference League tie with Cercle.

Transcript

00:00Welcome to the historic city centre of Bruges, where Hearts fans are starting to arrive ahead

00:06of Thursday night's Conference League tie against Cercle. The surroundings, as you can

00:10see, are quite spectacular. One of the most beautiful cities that you'll visit in Europe.

00:16You've probably seen the background there, the horses and cats. That's not the evening

00:20news official transport to the ground just yet, but I'm sure we'll get there one way

00:24or another for the press conferences on Wednesday and the match on Thursday evening. In the

00:30city itself, the Christmas markets have obviously started. It's a beautiful setting. The rain's

00:36been a little bit of a damn bummer. I have to be honest and say that as you walk around

00:39this place, you turn every corner and it's wow, you know, another set of buildings, another

00:44brilliant picturesque scene as we walk through here. Try and turn the camera a little bit

00:49and you'll get just a flavour of what the place is like and some of the architecture

00:55that I'm talking about. It's quite busy, although it's late November. It's one of these tourist

01:00places that's always got lots of people walking around. Hearts arrive here on Wednesday, Wednesday

01:07afternoon ahead of Thursday night's game. Cercle are not in the best of form, lost seven

01:13of their last 15 games, but a very specific style of play and a very tough opponent for

01:19Hearts. I think they tend to favour a pretty British style of play under the Austrian coach

01:25Miron Muslic and they are in a similar position to Hearts in the sense that they realise that

01:30if they win on Thursday night, then they've got one foot in the knockout playoff round.

01:35So it's a massive tie in prospect. We're expecting just over 3,000 Hearts fans here and as I

01:40said, they've started to filter into the city centre. Plenty of bars for them to frequent

01:45and sample some of the Belgian beer. Even the news haven't been in there, of course,

01:50I'm just going by word of mouth. So hopefully over the next couple of days there'll be even

01:55more jambos filling the place up. I'm looking forward to a good tie in prospect on Thursday

02:00night at the Jan Bredel Stadium.