Braga insists the hurt from having the title ripped from their grasp is behind the Jambos as they return with Wouter Vrancken at the helm

Emotional Claudio Braga and his dejected Hearts team trooped out of Celtic Park.

Their Scottish Premiership dream had been cruelly ripped from their grasp in the final minutes of last season.

Derek McInnes’s Jambos had led the league for the majority of the season.

They had only needed a point at Parkhead and were in that position until Daizen Maeda scored in the 87th minute and Callum Osmond clinched it for Celtic with the final kick of the ball.

That sparked the final whistle and a massive pitch invasion that saw Hearts leave the stadium in their strips and head back to the capital on the bus.

It was a cruel and devastating way for their season to come to an end and it took some time to get over – as the 66-year wait for Hearts’ to be crowned champions goes on.

Derek McInnes and half the team from that day on May 16 have now departed.

Wouter Vrancken has taken over and put together a squad that is looking to take the fight to Celtic and Rangers again.

Braga admitted that they must park the previous Parkhead pain because they can’t let emotions get the better of them this time.

The Portuguese star stated: “I feel we are very ready. I feel like, for the moment, no one is thinking about that.

“Because we can’t. It gets you emotional.

“Of course, emotions come to football and that’s not good when you get too emotional.

“We just need think: Okay, it’s a good opposition in the league right now and nothing to do with last year.

“We just need to go there and try to get the points this year.”

It took Braga a long time to process what happened in the east end of Glasgow.

The season ended empty-handed but there were still positives from it all. Hearts did a lot of things right last season. It is a case of repeating and building on them for this season.

Braga admitted: “I feel – and I believe Harry (Milne) feels the same – the first few weeks it hurt a lot. Because it was a full season fighting for that.

“But after that, you look back and feel like, oh, we did something really good.

“If you just focus on the positives about that, you don’t even remember that night.

“There is nothing to do other than focus on what we can control now.

“It’s a different team, different coach, different style, different players, different tactics different era.

“Almost everything is different. The starting players, compared to last year, maybe there are three or four guys.

“It’s a completely different Hearts. You can’t just think about what happened in 1999 or last year.

“It doesn’t really matter. We just focus on what happens this year and that’s it.”

The Gorgie side is in the midst of another gruelling spell both domestically and in Europe. After Celtic they head to Turkey to take on Trabzonspor. They have five matches before the Premier Sports Cup semi-final against Hibs.

There are some massive matches against the likes of Mo Salah, but Braga is looking to rise to the challenge.

He said: “If you look at the month of October, it’s a very tough month.

“But when you are a kid, you just dream about that.

“Playing big games every time and never drop the level, that’s just a dream.

“It’s a great positive to focus on, instead of thinking: Oh, these are tough opponents.

“Of course, they will be tough. But it’s also very good, it means you are among the best and that is good.”

Braga’s own disappointment was that they didn’t open up their Conference League group stage assault with a win. Nordsjaelland’s late goal denied them that victory. Braga knows the manner of it was hard to take but they have to learn from it and kick on.

He confirmed: “We had more chances than just to lead 1-0, we could’ve gone to 2-0.

“But of course they are a very good opponent, they played very good football in the second half when they had more of the ball.

“We knew they would be dangerous when they had the ball; that’s their game.

“We hoped that the goal wouldn’t come but they were a little bit on top of us in the last minutes.

“It is disappointing. I feel like we ran a lot in the second half.

“This style of game obligates you to run without the ball also, to make a lot of movements and with the ball to press high also.

“It’s kind of a hard style of game to do it so, of course, we’re going to get tired if we do it properly.

“I think we did. Then it was disappointing to suffer the goal when we did.

“I feel 1-0 was deserved and it could’ve been more.

“We were doing good. You need to be more efficient in a way, we wanted to score more.

“I had a big chance just before half-time, it was left-footed.

“When I shot straight away I thought: I just needed to chop inside and hit it with the right.

“But it’s one of these moments where you need to think in half a second.”

It is those fine margins but Braga and Hearts are hoping to be on the right end of one or two of them in the coming games.