{"id":21542,"date":"2026-01-13T21:10:11","date_gmt":"2026-01-13T21:10:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/21542\/"},"modified":"2026-01-13T21:10:11","modified_gmt":"2026-01-13T21:10:11","slug":"hearts-agree-pre-contract-with-uganda-forward-mato","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/21542\/","title":{"rendered":"Hearts agree pre-contract with Uganda forward Mato"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Uganda forward Rogers Mato has signed a pre-contract agreement to join Scottish Premiership leaders Heart of Midlothian this summer from North Macedonian top-flight leaders Vardar.<\/p>\n<p>The 22-year-old has been in prolific form for Vardar this season, scoring 15 goals and contributing two assists in 17 appearances.<\/p>\n<p>Advertisement<\/p>\n<p>He has agreed a three-year contract with Hearts, which will commence in July after the expiry of his current contract.<\/p>\n<p>First capped by his country in 2022, Mato has scored eight international goals in 41 matches, including a consolation goal in an Africa Cup of Nations defeat by Nigeria last month.<\/p>\n<p>After starting his career in Uganda with Proline and KCCA, he signed for Turkish outfit Sanliurfaspor in 2023.<\/p>\n<p>Mato moved to North Macedonia with AP Brera before making the switch to Vardar last year.<\/p>\n<p>Vardar currently lead second-top Struga by one point after 16 games.<\/p>\n<p><img alt=\"\" loading=\"lazy\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" data-nimg=\"1\" style=\"color:transparent\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/1768338611_960_.gif\"\/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Uganda forward Rogers Mato has signed a pre-contract agreement to join Scottish Premiership leaders Heart of Midlothian this&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":21543,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[58],"tags":[146,13418,122,8831,13416,153,13417],"class_list":{"0":"post-21542","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uganda","8":"tag-africa-cup-of-nations","9":"tag-heart-of-midlothian","10":"tag-nigeria","11":"tag-rogers-mato","12":"tag-scottish-premiership","13":"tag-uganda","14":"tag-vardar"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21542","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21542"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21542\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21543"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21542"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21542"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21542"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}