Jan Breydel Stadium

Barry Anderson reports from Belgium ahead of Cercle Brugge v Hearts.

Transcript

00:00Hello from Belgium, inside the Jan Bredel Stadium, which is home to Cercle Brugge and

00:07Club Brugge. Hearts play here on Thursday evening in the UEFA Conference League. I've

00:13arrived with the squad today, this is Wednesday, so they're now preparing to visit the stadium

00:19and have a walk around later tonight. As you'll see from the background, it's a pretty sizable

00:26venue, holds 30,000 people, almost 30,000 people in total. There's around 3,000 Hearts

00:33fans expected and they will congregate in the far corner there behind me. As you can

00:39see, that's the designated away section for fans here in Belgium. We just did the press

00:46conference there with Cercle Brugge head coach Miron Muslic and he's in good form, speaks

00:53very good English and was explaining the situation that he's got with his players. He's without

00:58quite a number of players for Thursday night's game. Most notably Kevin Denke, his top-goal

01:05scorer who has suspended. That's a major boost for Hearts, they'll look to try and capitalise

01:10on that and get a victory which would pretty much secure a place in the knockout play-off

01:17round of the Conference League which takes place in February. Hearts have got six points

01:21from their opening three games in the league phase at the moment. Three more would take

01:26them through to that play-off round and that's their first target, they've got three games

01:31left. Cercle Brugge here on Thursday and then a trip to Copenhagen to play FC Copenhagen

01:37and then they finish off at home against the Moldovan side Petrokub. So a huge game on

01:42Thursday. Our game Hearts are certainly capable of winning. Cercle Brugge are a top four side

01:47as are Hearts when the draw was made. Both teams will be quite evenly matched. Cercle

01:53obviously weakened without a number of their players, a number of key players are injured

01:58and won't take part as well as Denke who's suspended. So a good opportunity for Hearts

02:02here in Brugge to really get this Conference League campaign sewn up.