Hearts’ inevitable Europa League exit was confirmed, but pride was recovered in a well-deserved second-leg draw at home to Benfica.<\/p>\n
Tomas Bent Magnusson struck a thunderous opening goal past Samuel Soares to reward Hearts for a much more expansive second-half display.<\/p>\n
But the Hearts fans had barely sat back on their seats before Benfica levelled, Dodi Lukebakio firing past Beau Reus from inside the area.<\/p>\n
It means Hearts will play Rapid Vienna in the Conference League play-offs, knowing a performance like this will stand them in good stead to progress.<\/p>\n
Wouter Vrancken’s side showed admirable but contrasting qualities in either half, spending much of the first period trying to keep their illustrious opponents at bay, defending their box doughtily.<\/p>\n
But the second half was a different story altogether, with Hearts deservedly breaking the deadlock when Magnusson, not long on as a substitute, lashed an unstoppable first-time left-foot shot in from outside the box.<\/p>\n
Their joy was shortlived as Benfica finally found their finishing touch, Lukebakio giving Reus no chance with a well-taken finish.<\/p>\n
Hearts played some excellent football after the interval and thought they had the lead earlier after superb work by Claudio Braga and Josh McPake to allow Calvin Miller to slot home, only for VAR to rule it out for an offside against McPake.<\/p>\n
A draw was arguably a fair outcome on the night, with Benfica controlling the first half without possessing last week’s clinical edge, with an Amar Dedic header deflected onto the frame of the goal the closest they came in that spell.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Hearts’ inevitable Europa League exit was confirmed, but pride was recovered in a well-deserved second-leg draw at home…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":111210,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[61,60,112],"class_list":["post-592620","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/592620","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=592620"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/592620\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/111210"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=592620"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=592620"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=592620"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}