Hearts star is the talk of World Cup bound nation as dream call up chat goes beyond his imagination

The striker signed from Norwegian second tier side Aalesund last summer and has been pivotal to the club’s surge to first place in the Premiership ahead of the Easter weekend. Braga has 15 goals and six assists to his name ahead of this weekend’s clash at Livingston, and the forward says he has emerged on the radar of Portugal’s national team as the World Cup in America, Canada and Mexico stands only a few months away.

Braga uses CR7’s iconic ‘siu’ celebration, a straight jump that ends with arms outstretched and a battle cry to finish, not thinking he’d be on the same team one day as the 41-year-old icon. Interest in Hearts’ number 10 from Portugal has boomed as the club bid to become the first club outside Rangers and Celtic in 41 years to win the Scottish top flight, and while still an outside bet to be called upon by head coach Roberto Martinez, merely the talk of it is a huge boost for the forward.

Could Claudio Braga play for Portugal?

“I feel for me it was good in a way that I had no name in Portugal before I came to Hearts,” Braga explained. “Here I was recognised a little bit but in Portugal nobody knew a lot about my name. Thank God I have been talked now and the national team has also been a talk. I am really happy with that. Of course, if your nation recognises you a little bit, it's good.

“My name has been talked about but it’s all with my agents. I just try to focus as much as I can here. Of course it's good to feel that the coach knows who you are and everything else. That's something that I never dreamt of and just being in that position is amazing. I feel happy. I feel like if we're not doing as well as a team, I would probably never have been talked. That helped me doing the individual work and then of course being first place with the team that we are right now also helps me individually and people pay more attention.

“I was watching the squad, and I was like, just to be talked by journalists or something, my name to be there. It’s something that I probably never thought of, especially the national team that Portugal have right now. It's such a good quality national team but it just proves that nothing is impossible.”

For the dilemma facing him over his celebration? That one will probably be left to the former Real Madrid and Manchester United forward, but as someone who sought to get his name on the back of his childhood jerseys, Braga sees Ronaldo as a major inspiration.

“I'll need to talk with the boss about that,” the Hearts forward joked. “I'll talk with him but probably no. There he is the main man! Like everybody in Portugal, even if it was the fake ones, everybody would have these Ronaldo shirts. It's somebody that every kid in Portugal looked up to and I still think they look up to Ronaldo a lot because he is just an inspiration.

Claudio Braga on Hearts title race

“We're doing something that's not been done in a long time and we’re doing something special. Of course people that care about me also get to see all the games but it's different to talk on the phone or on a video call compared to talking in person. So everybody wants to talk. If I met new people that I haven’t seen in a long time, they also talk about that. It's talk of the moment when I go to Portugal.”

Attention in the meantime is fully on what Hearts can achieve in Scotland, and Braga admits it’s hard to escape talk of the title when the club are brought up in conversation. The dressing room inside Tynecastle know what is at stake and a steely focus not to get caught up in the hype will be needed, with Livi and Motherwell to come pre-split.

“We have seven games to go and if we're not ready now, then I don't think we will ever be,” added Braga. “We have a lot of big personalities and everybody is loving the time that we are having at Hearts. So we just need to push each other to do a little bit more, be more demanding on the pitch. We know we are first place and we can't run away from that. We can't run away from looking at the table and knowing that we are first place. It's only seven games, nobody is dumb.

“Of course, we look and we see it can be possible. I've been telling this every time I give an interview and I think it's actually what we should do. It's difficult sometimes, I'm not going to lie, because the noise outside is a lot. You look at the table, it's getting closer, it's getting tense. At the same time, if we take game by game, if we don't worry about Motherwell or the games in the split, just go to Livingston. Focus about Livingston and know if we win this game, we can be champions.

“Then it’s Motherwell, and if we win this game, then it's different. We should not think about seven games from now, where are we going to be? After Livingston, where are we going to be? Because that's really important to understand. We've been to Kilmarnock, and we probably got the worst game that we played this season, and maybe the mentality was not in the right moment. The mentality was probably two or three games ahead instead of being in that game, and then maybe it killed us. So I think we should be good enough and professional enough to think about Livingston and just Livingston.”

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