Amakhosi coach Muhsin Ertugral told kaizerchiefs.com on Sunday that he could not have asked for a better performance from his players during their penalty shoot out win over Moroka Swallows in a Telkom Cup game, played at the Vodacom Loftus Stadium in Tshwane on Saturday evening.

Penalties were needed to separate the two sides after they had finished off ninety minutes and extra time tied at 2-2. Chiefs prevailed in the shoot out, winning 3-1 to advance to the next round of the competition.

For Ertugral it was his second consecutive victory over Swallows in Telkom Cup matches, as he bundled the Birds out at the quarterfinal stage of last year's event when he was still the coach of Ajax Cape Town. Ertugral, who after the game, decided to give his team, who are next in action late in October, a couple of days off to rest and gain their composure back after Saturday’s draining encounter.

The Chiefs coach praised his team’s character as they played for close on forty minutes of the game with ‘ten men’, and were still able to stick to their game plan and even took the lead in extra time.

Quartey up front

While many would find it strange to hear the Chiefs coach saying that his team played the final ten minutes of normal time plus extra time with ten men as Chiefs did not have any players sent off, they did have an injury to Jonathan Quartey, which meant that the Ghanaian defender with all three substitutions having been made already could not be replaced.

Instead Ertugral dropped David Obua back into defence and played an injured Jonathan Quartey as a strike partner for Kaizer Motaung Junior.

Explaining the injury to Quartey and his decision to play him in attack, Ertugral said: “Jonathan got a knock to the hip and his movement was limited and with us having made three substitutions already, we were unable to replace him. So we had to improvise and pushed him up front and even though he was injured, he played a part in our second goal. In the week he will be sent for further tests so that we can get a better idea of the injury.”

Motaung goal

The Chiefs coach has not held back his criticism of certain of the decisions that were made during the Swallows game, and in particular referee Jerome Damon’s decision to rule out what looked like a perfectly legitimate goal by Kaizer Motaung Junior at the end of the first period of extra time.

Had Motaung’s goal stood, The Amakhosi would have had an unassailable 3-1 lead and would not have needed a shoot out to wrap up the game. Ertugral, while commenting on the decision to rule out Motaung’s extra time strike added, “I was really surprised that the referee decided not to award us the goal from where I was sitting you could clearly see that when Arthur sent in the cross, Kaizer was well on side”.

Job well done

In the end Motaung’s ruled out strike was elementary as Chiefs still managed to find a way past the Birds by getting the better of their Soweto rivals in the shoot out.

Ertugral had the following to say of his team’s performance through the ninety minutes and extra time during the Telkom Cup win: "I just felt that our over all game showed the strengths of our team, from the back we put up a good showing, the midfielders were enterprising and were a real problem for the Swallows defence. Siphiwe Tshabalala was once again causing havoc in the middle of the park. Up front it was good to see both the front man getting onto to the score sheet. Khune must also get a mention for keeping a calm head in the shoot out and stepping up to the plate and making those two important stops when the game went to penalty kicks.”