Bullying Bolton's Santos, Crazy away fans and THAT pitch invasion: Kusini Yengi picks his five favourite Portsmouth games

Signed from Western Sydney Warriors in July 2023, Kusini Yengi went on to score 13 goals in 45 games during his two Fratton Park seasons.

He was released in May after Pompey finished 16th in the Championship and has since moved to Scottish Premiership side Aberdeen.

Now the 27-year-old has selected his top-five Pompey matches - and here they are...

‘If I am being realistic, I enjoyed every single game. Being in the UK for the 2023-24 season, playing for Pompey, everything was new to me,’ he told The News.

‘I was doing everything for the first time, whether away at Exeter away or travelling nine hours on a coach to Carlisle or playing in the rain.

‘Players over here for the last 5-10 years are a bit sick of doing these things, for everything for me was a new experience, so I really enjoyed everything about the whole year. But here are my favourite five.’

1) Pompey 2 Bolton 0 (December 11, 2023)

That was my favourite Pompey game - it was a match I played from the start and also scored in.

It was one of those moments in the season when we put our best foot forward as a team, everyone played really well and we were able to show that we were real title contenders. I enjoyed that game a lot.

I didn’t know much about Ricardo Santos before the game. I had spoken to some of the boys and they told me about him, the type of defender he is, what he has been like and how he has dominated in the league for quite some time.

So it was nice for me to have a good game and be able to get the better of him.

2) Peterborough 0 Pompey 1 (March 16, 2024)

This was an amazing game and an amazing game for me as an individual to get the winning goal. Seeing all those fans there for an away match was a crazy sight, something I hadn’t seen before.

I know a lot of fans say it was the match which convinced them that we would get promotion, but, as a squad, we had the belief throughout the season. It wasn’t just about Peterborough.

For the fans, it’s a bit more difficult because they are not there at the training ground day in, day out, watching how hard we are training and the intensity.

They only really get to see the match-day and sometimes we might come into games and are unable to put our best forward from the first moment, possibly scraping a win at the end. So perhaps they weren’t convinced until a certain point.

But, as a playing group, we believed. We knew.

3) Pompey 3 Barnsley 2 (April 16, 2024)

The night we got promoted was obviously a very, very special game. It was very cinematic, falling behind after six minutes, then equalising, then losing again, then two goals in the last seven minutes to win it.

My mother, brother, girlfriend and agent were all in the stands against Barnsley for the first time, which was really good. Then that pitch invasion at the end was something special.

It was actually a bit of a strange game. We didn’t really have our usual style of playing, we used a bit of a different formation to begin with to counter the way Barnsley played and it kind of wasn’t working too well. We weren’t really in the game and were losing.

But everybody knows the rest of the story!

4) Pompey 1 Bristol Rovers 1 (August 5, 2023)

My Pompey debut - and I managed to come off the bench and score a 92nd-minute equaliser.

For me, that was a very important game in our season. We were losing 1-0, everyone was kind of getting a bit down and it was looking like we were going to lose the first game of the season at home.

Thankfully I came on late into the match and managed to make it 1-1, which helped propel myself forward for the rest of the season.

5) Pompey 3 Cambridge United 1 (February 13, 2024)

What really stands out for me is this was my first game back since returning from playing in the Asian Cup for Australia.

The rules and the way the game is played in the Asian Cup is completely different to how football operates in England.

You are not really allowed much contact, the moment you touch someone or there’s a bit of physical contact, the referee blows for a free-kick - and I was really eager to be back and playing in League One.

I wanted to embrace a bit of contact again, so it was nice to be out there against Cambridge, throwing my body around and getting some good minutes into my legs.

That was a good game for me, I played pretty well personally.

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