Benni: Chiefs' big giants want to hurt players

Cape Town - Cape Town City coach Benni McCarthy believes overly aggressive defending from Kaizer Chiefs players caused his attacking stars to be ineffective in Sunday's 2-0 loss to Amakhosi.

The Glamour Boys won the Nedbank Cup quarter-final courtesy of strikes by Hendrick Ekstein as well as Dumisani Zuma.

Nonetheless, the likes of Kermit Erasmus and Riyaad Norodien were not at the races in the encounter seemingly because of some tough tackling from Chiefs' defence.

McCarthy told reporters after the tie: "We started okay, wasn't too bad.

"But you could see the intentions from Chiefs were clear, and what I was expecting from my team, we didn't do that.

"We started playing Kermit Erasmus, a 5-foot 2 player, against the big giants who wants to hurt players, the Hadebes of today you know, because he does it over and over and over again.

"Players who have no intentions of just winning clean balls, he takes anything else off the spot and if he gets away with it, why [should he] stop?

"So yeah, we started to play into Chiefs' hands and when the ball doesn’t get to us, then you start seeing players doing things they are not supposed to do, and that was the case."

City are next in action in the Premiership when they take on Golden Arrows on Saturday in Durban.