Hearts give Malachi Boateng freedom as management's message is clear

SNS Group

The quiet assurance of Malachi Boateng was a strong feature in Hearts’ improved performance at Viktoria Plzen. Thursday night was his European debut and only his fourth appearance since moving to Edinburgh from Crystal Palace, but the midfielder’s growing influence is already clear. Freedom to play is a major factor.

Boateng adopted a protective midfield role in the Doosan Arena as Hearts delivered a disciplined display against their Czech hosts. A 1-0 defeat through Daniel Oyegoke’s stoppage-time own goal leaves the Europa League play-off tight and tense ahead of this Thursday’s second leg at Tynecastle Park.

A number of players who stood out in Czechia must do so again, first at Motherwell in the league on Sunday and then again when Plzen arrive. Boateng is in that category despite being Hearts’ second most-recent signing behind the Colombian Andrés Salazar. His positioning, composure, tackling and ball retention skills are quickly becoming a key feature in the team at Tynecastle.

“It’s definitely very different,” he said of his European debut in an interview with the Edinburgh News. “I feel I’m comfortable with it and I feel I’m ready for it as well. I’m happy that I’ve come to Hearts and shown I can play on the European stage. We have a big and a very good squad, so I’m just working on myself and focusing on the getting into the team every week. I’m not thinking I should be starting every game because there are loads of games in the season.”

Head coach Steven Naismith is clearly impressed with the 22-year-old who previously impressed in Scotland whilst on loan from Palace at Queen’s Park and Dundee. “He knows that I’m comfortable on the ball, so keep showcasing that is the message,” revealed Boateng. “He has a lot of trust and faith in me at the moment so I’m really happy that is working. He has given me a bit of freedom to play football, which I like.”

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Whilst Hearts’ raised performance level was much-needed after losses at Dundee and Falkirk, they are still yet to win this season. The Plzen game is intended to be a baseline for future fixtures. “The game was going well, the boys stuck in, it was just a last-minute lapse in concentration. I thought the boys worked very hard and I was quite impressed,” said Boateng.

“This is a good bunch of boys who are getting around each other. We know it’s still possible to score goals with the players we’ve got. We know we can hurt teams. We are obviously a bit deflated but it’s still possible to do this next week. We have players who can hurt the opposition and we worked on it throughout the week. We saw that the previous two results weren’t good enough so we worked on it. On Thursday, we showed that we can compete with good teams. Next week, we need to put in another performance and try to beat them.”

The improvement is a step in the right direction, but winning is what counts. “Yeah, I think so,” said Boateng. “I think it’s just simple and basic things, like organisation and stuff like that. The boys played well, focused on the 90 minutes and just got back to the basics of the game. We want to turn this around as well and get wins. We know how important winning is as a team and a club. At Hearts, you need to be winning and playing well so we need to turn this into wins.”

READ MORE: Czech FA give Viktoria Plzen a helping hand against Hearts