Hearts star Claudio Braga has admitted he has absolutely no idea whether he will still be at the club when the summer transfer window slams shut on September 3.
Speculation linking the Portuguese forward to Ligue 1 outfit Lyon and other European clubs has cooled in recent weeks, with no concrete offers yet materialising for the Premiership player of the year.
Despite the uncertainty surrounding his future, Braga has offered supporters at least one firm guarantee — he still feels completely at home at Tynecastle.
The 26-year-old has made clear that any departure would need to benefit both himself and Hearts, ruling out any move that serves only his own interests.
Asked directly whether he expects to remain a Hearts player beyond the window, Braga said: “I have no idea about that.”
He added: “I told this to everybody: if I go away it’s got to be something good for me and for the club — it’s never going to be something only good for me.”
The forward continued: “So yeah, of course, I like to be here. I feel good here, and then the rest, let’s see.”
Braga’s future comes amid a period of enormous upheaval at Tynecastle, with 11 first-team players exiting and an entirely new squad assembled during the summer recruitment drive.
The club also lost manager Derek McInnes, the man who guided Hearts to the very brink of the Premiership title in May, when he departed to take charge at a rival club.
Adding to the turbulence, Hearts suffered a painful Champions League qualifying exit this week, falling 6-0 on aggregate to Sturm Graz following a 2-0 home defeat in the second leg.
Braga, who scored 17 goals last season and collected four player of the year awards, described the European exit as the death of a lifelong dream.
“That was one of my biggest dreams when I was a child,” he said. “You dream about playing in the Champions League. Even though it was play-offs, it’s Champions League anyway, and now that it’s over.”
The forward was measured but honest when assessing where new head coach Wouter Vrancken’s side currently stands compared to last season’s title-chasing team.
“The style of play last year, you look a little bit more for the intensity in the game, and the focus was more on the intensity in the game and everything,” Braga said.
He believes this season’s approach is more structured, saying: “This year is more like the tactical part. The way we try to play good football and create a lot of chances, which we do.”
Braga acknowledged the Graz defeat was built on individual errors rather than a fundamental gap in quality between the two sides.
“It’s not because we play worse than them, it’s because we committed a lot more mistakes than them,” he said. “You pay for the mistakes against these teams.”
He conceded the transition under Vrancken has been demanding given the volume of change at the club in such a short window of time.
“It’s hard to deal with all that in a small period of time, but we are paid to do this, so we should be able to do it,” he said.
With a major Premiership opener away to Aberdeen arriving immediately, Braga insists there is no room for self-pity inside the Hearts dressing room right now.
“We just can’t think a lot about that, and we have Aberdeen to play next, and that’s the only thing we need to focus on,” he said.
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