Jonathan Quartey started just his second game for Chiefs in 2008 when he began The Amakhosi’s successful Nedbank Cup round of 32 match against Ajax Cape Town on Friday evening. The Ghanaian was amongst Chiefs top performers in the match as The Amakhosi knocked out the defending champions and he earned an extra R5 000 as he was voted as the man-of-the-match.

After the game Quartey was quick to thank his teammates for the support given to him during the match and said that he would be sharing the winnings with them.

Quartey was played away from his preferred slot in the centre of defence by Muhsin Ertugral, and although he took time to settle he did a sterling job adding cover for the missing Tinashe Nengomasha.

Team Effort

Quartey believes that his early season injury woes are well and truly behind him, and that his excellent display against Ajax was made easier by the sound overall performance from Chiefs during the match as he said. “We were playing in the kind of match and against an opponent that was always going to be tough to beat, we were well aware from earlier that we needed to work as one to win the match. There were many frustrating moments for us, as we missed all those chances and there were some near misses when Russell Mwafulirwa hit the cross bar on our side, in the end our cohesion and ability to play well over the 120 minutes pulled us through”.

Settling In

With Nengomasha missing, Quartey was given the job in the holding midfield role, and by his own admission it took him a few minutes to fit into the role but when he did there was no looking back. He explained adding “I am not accustomed to playing where I was meant to in midfield and I kept on falling way back in those opening exchanges and was playing more as a fifth defender. I soon realized and got back onto the job and enjoyed playing in the midfield there after, also having to battle against Eyog Enoh and trying to stop Bryce Moon from pushing up was really exciting”.

Sharing

Quartey felt it was an honour being named as the man-of-the-match an honour he believes happened as a result of good team work by the entire team, he felt it only fitting that he share his prize money with the rest of the team. The Ghanaian gave his reasons for doing this saying “it was not Jonathan Quartey alone who won the match but the entire team, so I felt that although it is not much it will be nice to share the prize with the other guys. Should we win our next couple of Nedbank Cup matches I hope that the other Chiefs man of the match will agree to placing the money into a pool and at the end we can split it amongst all the guys”.