Heart of Midlothian F.C.

Heart of Midlothian Football Club, commonly known as Hearts, is a professional football club in Edinburgh, Scotland. The team competes in the Scottish Premiership, the top division of Scottish football. Hearts, the oldest football club in the Scottish capital, was formed in 1874, its name influenced by Walter Scott's novel The Heart of Midlothian. The club crest is based on the Heart of Midlothian mosaic on the city's Royal Mile; the team's colours are maroon and white. Their local rivals are Hibernian, with whom they contest the Edinburgh Derby.

Hearts have played home matches at Tynecastle Park since 1886. After the ground was converted into an all-seater stadium in 1990, it now has a capacity of 19,852 following the completion of a rebuilt main stand in 2017. They have training facilities at the Oriam, Scotland's national performance centre for sport, where they also run their youth academy.

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 former player turned manager Tommy Walker from the early 1950s to mid 1960s, during which they won two league titles and five major cups and finished inside the league's top four positions for 11 consecutive seasons and 1954 and 1962. Jimmy Wardhaugh, Willie Bauld and Alfie Conn Sr., known as the Terrible Trio, were forwards at the start of this period with wing half linchpins 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 a Scottish top-flight winning campaign (132) and also became the only side to finish a season in the Scottish top tier with a goal difference exceeding 100 (+103).

Hearts have won the Scottish Cup eight times, most recently in 2012 after a 5–1 victory over Hibernian. They have since been beaten finalists in 2019, 2020 and 2022. All four of Hearts' Scottish League Cup triumphs came under Walker, most recently a 1–0 victory against Kilmarnock in 1962. Their most recent League Cup Final appearance was in 2013, where they lost 3–2 to St Mirren.

In 1958, Heart of Midlothian became the third Scottish and fifth British team to compete in European competition. The club reached the quarter-finals of the 1988–89 UEFA Cup, losing to Bayern Munich 2–1 on aggregate.

The club was formed by a group of friends from the Heart of Midlothian Quadrille Assembly Club. The group of friends bought a ball before playing local rules football at the Tron from where they were directed by a local policeman to The Meadows to play. Local rules football was a mix of rugby and association football. In December 1873 a match was held between XIs selected by Mr Thomson from Queen's Park and Mr Gardner from Clydesdale at Raimes Park in Bonnington. This was the first time that Association rules had been seen in Edinburgh. Members from the dance club viewed the match and in 1874 decided to adopt the association rules. The new side was Heart of Mid-Lothian Football Club. The exact date of the club's formation was never recorded; however, 1874 is regarded as the year of formation as it was when association rules were taken on, although Tom Purdie claimed the club was formed in 1873. The earliest mention of Heart of Midlothian in a sporting context is a report in The Scotsman newspaper from 20 July 1864 of The Scotsman vs Heart of Mid-Lothian at cricket. It is not known if this was the same club who went on to form the football club, but it was common for football clubs in those days to play other sports as well.

The club took its name from historic county Midlothian, dating from the Middle Ages, as well as the Heart of Midlothian mosaic on the Royal Mile, which marks the historic entrance to the Old Tolbooth jail, which was demolished in 1817 but was kept fresh in the mind by Walter Scott's novel The Heart of Midlothian.