Heart of Midlothian Football Club, commonly known as Hearts, is a Scottish professional football club based in Gorgie in the west of Edinburgh. Hearts are the oldest football club in the Scottish capital, having been formed in 1874 by a group of friends from the Heart of Midlothian Quadrille Assembly Club (Dancing). The modern club crest is based on the Heart of Midlothian mosaic on the city’s Royal Mile and the team’s colours are predominantly maroon and white.
Hearts play at Tynecastle Park, where home matches have been played since 1886. After renovating the ground into an all-seater stadium following the findings of the Taylor Report in 1990, the all-seated stadium originally had a capacity of 18,008, but over the years this has been reduced to roughly 17,000 to comply with UEFA regulations. Their current training facilities are at the nearby Heriot Watt University in Edinburgh.
Hearts have won the Scottish league championship four times, most recently in 1959–60, when they also retained the Scottish League Cup to complete a League and League Cup double – the only club outside of the Old Firm to achieve such a feat. The club’s most successful period was under Tommy Walker from the mid 1950s to mid 1960s. They won seven trophies in this period and were runners up for five others. Jimmy Wardhaugh, Willie Bauld and Alfie Conn, Sr. known affectionately as the Terrible Trio were famed forwards at the start of this period with wing half lynch pins Dave Mackay and John Cumming. Wardhaugh was part of another notable Hearts attacking trinity in the 1957–58 league winning side. Along with Jimmy Murray and Alex Young they set the record for the number of goals scored in that league winning campaign (132). In doing so they became the only side to finish a season with a goal difference exceeding 100 (+103).
Hearts have won the Scottish Cup eight times, most recently in 2012 after a 5–1 win over city-rivals Hibernian. Hearts’ four Scottish League Cup triumphs were all under Walker, most recently a 1–0 1962 Scottish League Cup Final victory against Kilmarnock. The most recent Scottish League Cup Final appearance was in 2013 when they lost to St Mirren 3–2.
In 1958, Heart of Midlothian became the third Scottish and fifth British team to compete in European competition at the time. The club reached the quarter-finals of the 1988–89 UEFA Cup, losing out to Bayern Munich 2–1 on aggregate.