Newly-crowned Premiership Player of the Month Claudio Braga says he is loving life in Scottish football and insists Hearts aren’t feeling the pressure of being title contenders.
The Portuguese forward has been one of the signings of the season so far and has played a big part in the Tynecastle side holding a seven-point lead at the top of the table after 12 games played and unbeaten in the league.
That, inevitably, has had people talking about the possibility of a first non-Old Firm title winner since 1985 and questions about whether Hearts can last the pace and lift the silverware against all the odds.
Braga insists the players aren’t putting any pressure on themselves and that while there might be outside noise, their focus is on winning games, and bouncing back quickly any time they fail to get three points.
“We’re first place right now,” he told STV. “So, of course, there is something special about it.
“But I think outside of our locker room and outside of our club, the pressure that people are putting, we are not putting that pressure on us.
“We’re just trying to win games, game by game, and we’re going to slip sometimes but we’re going to try to make it better every time.
“It’s not about title contenders or anything else. We cannot start thinking about the end of the season already. It’s only going to be bad for us.
“So just put the pressure away from us. We don’t have any pressure.”
The 26-year-old seems to have settled quickly in Scottish football and says he is “an ambitious guy” who was keen to take the step up and move to Edinburgh. Braga said he realised on the first day of training it was going to be “tough” but believes the style suits him and confidence came as soon as he adapted to his teammates and the competition.
“I think it was kind of what I was expecting,” he said. “Maybe more intense than I was expecting, even though that was one of the big things that I thought.
“It was going to be an intense, aggressive game. But the way that people don’t stop running, never. It’s crazy and I think that suits me well in the game that I play.
“So probably that’s the reason why it’s working so well. I think I should be Scottish in my style of play.
“But in the rest, the atmosphere in the stadiums is the thing that I get more surprised by. It’s a big atmosphere.”
It’s taken the forward a long time to become an overnight success. He began his senior career with Rio Ave’s B team in 2018 and then played with Valadares Gaia, Fatima, Sporting Ideal and Vila Mea in the Portuguese lower leagues before making the surprise switch to Norway in 2022.
A promotion-winning season with third-tier Moss led to a switch to Aalesunds and it was his form in Scandinavia that saw him pop up on Hearts’ radar as the club’s partnership with data firm Jamestown Analytics flagged him as a value signing. Braga admits it’s been a lot to take in.
“It’s been tough to describe in words,” he said. “It’s easy to dream of when you’re a kid and knowing that you always wanted to be a football player. So it’s easy to dream, to get to the professional level but you never actually get the chance to know that you’re going to get there.
“It’s always unstable. So getting to this part of my life where I feel that I achieved something that was really important for me, playing in the first league in a club like Hearts. Going from Portugal, fourth division, to Norway, third division, then going to second and kind of getting a little bit frustrated in the middle, of course, because I wanted to get better and better and to get to other leagues.
“But suddenly getting the opportunity to come here and prove myself on a big stage, it’s unexplainable, to be honest.”
Braga has thrived alongside Hearts captain Lawrence Shankland, scoring nine goals overall and six in the league so far, and he believes a blend of healthy competitiveness and understanding between the two can see them both thrive.
His performances so far have made him a fans’ favourite but the way they express their adoration for the forward has made headlines beyond Scottish football.
The terrace chant of ‘All we need is Claudio Braga’, to the tune of Queen hit Radio Gaga, has gone viral and he says that not only is the song a pleasure to hear at games, it’s also helped people back home in Portugal realise how well he and the team are doing.
“It’s a good weird feeling in a way,” he said. “I really like the song. It’s just weird that it’s happening to me, but I really enjoy it.
“First time I listened to it, it was a voice message that was going kind of viral on Twitter. One of the guys in the club showed me and I was like, ‘Okay, they made a song for me, that’s cool’.
“But I thought it was only going to get viral, that ‘All we need…’ last part. But suddenly when I heard everybody singing on the stadium, the full song, the full two-minute song, then it just became like ‘This is actually happening’.
“It’s really good to know that it’s happening. It’s something that I’ll be able to tell my grandkids.
“But of course, most of my family is aware of how big this still is because in Portugal, people are talking a lot. And already the news are looking at Hearts.
“It wasn’t like that before. If people talk here [in Scotland], maybe it’s difficult to understand in Portugal. But if people talk there, then they understand a little bit how big it has become.”
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