"From the outside, it appears crazy," the young defender remarks, as he looks back on his recent summer, when dizzying change felt like a constant. "However, that's just how it goes ... football is a unpredictable game."
Days after claiming victory in the European Under-21 Championship with the English national team at the end of June, Quansah decided to leave his childhood club, to join the Bundesliga side in a multi-million pound transfer.
The significant transfer sum equalled big pressure as the 22-year-old was charged with finding his feet in a foreign land and at a club where the turnover was dramatic. Erik ten Hag had taken over to replace the previous coach and a host of key players were gone or going – including Florian Wirtz, key squad members, influential figures, Amine Adli, experienced professionals, Lukas Hradecky and Jonathan Tah.
Quansah's Bundesliga debut came on 23 August at home to Hoffenheim and the centre-half scored after the opening minutes, though the achievement was overshadowed by tragedy. His primary thought was Diogo Jota, who was killed in a car accident. Quansah executed Jota's gamer celebration as a mark of respect.
"To have a goal on your Bundesliga debut, at home, after five minutes, is definitely a rollercoaster," Quansah says. "However, my dominant emotion was that it was a tribute to Diogo."
The defender could have been excused for questioning what he had signed up for at the German club. After the encouraging beginning in their opening league fixture, they succumbed to a 2-1 defeat and the next match on 30 August was just as bad. Ten Hag's team squandered 2-0 and 3-1 leads to draw 3-3 at their reduced opponents, the equaliser coming in added time. It was no longer his responsibility for very long. His dismissal came on September 1st.
Quansah does not come across as the type to fret. If composure defines his game, it was evident during the conversation he participated in after joining the national team for the international friendly against their rivals and the World Cup qualifier against Latvia.
Quansah has remained focused under the current coach, Kasper Hjulmand, and persisted in doing what he always intended to do at the club – compete. Hjulmand has established consistency. His squad have three wins and one draw in their domestic campaign along with ties in each of their Champions League ties. But there is a more significant number that motivates the player, even bringing a measure of vindication. It is the one which shows he has played every minute of the team's season.
It is something that the England head coach has noted. The England head coach was a fan last season, including him when he announced his initial selection. After omitting him in the summer so that Quansah could focus on the youth tournament, he provided him with a late call-up in the autumn when the experienced defender was forced to withdraw.
Still to win his first cap, Quansah must have impressed sufficiently in training and around the camp because he was named at the outset in Tuchel's squad selection for Wales and Latvia, essentially as a fifth centre-back with the regular starter returning. The aspiration is a debut. It is one more milestone he would surely handle with ease.
"At Leverkusen, the team were keen on signing me for a while and that's not just from the manager [Ten Hag]," Quansah explains. "They were interested before he got appointed. So knowing it was a sort of internal decision and things would remain consistent with whatever coach was to come in ... it was straightforward for me to choose this path.
"We had a numerous squad members leaving and it's consistently challenging when you see important figures leave. It has been tough to establish new hierarchies but the outcomes we have had recently show that we have got a competitive team with quality players. It is requiring patience to develop and we are not where we want to be. But if we are getting results and not losing that is a solid foundation to start."
It had to have been a difficult separation for Quansah to depart from Liverpool, his team since childhood, where he experienced so many significant occasions – such as the Carabao Cup final victory over Chelsea in the previous season when he was introduced as an extra-time substitute.
Quansah was also a part of the previous campaign's Premier League title triumph. Yet his perspective of most of that achievement was not the one he would have chosen. He was an non-playing reserve on multiple matches in the competition, his limited playing time falling short compared to his numbers from 2023‑24 when he started nine games.
"I consistently developed off some of the best players around me at Liverpool and it's been so good for my career," he comments. "But as a young centre-back, you need games and I'm going to be needing hundreds of games to be where I want to be.
"I just wanted game time and when you are at a team like Liverpool, it's not promised because there are world-class players all over the pitch. I wanted an environment where they can have confidence that I could errors at times but they will see beyond that and see I can continue developing and pushing."
Quansah remembers his temporary transfer to League One Bristol Rovers in the later part of that season where he made his first senior appearances – 16 of them, to be precise. There were "numerous wake-up calls", he says with a smile, beginning with his debut; a heavy loss at their opponents.
"That represented a genuine revelation," Quansah says. "It was a extremely important part of my career because I wanted to make the next step to regular senior competition. Each match I gained fresh insights. That's where I understood how valuable practical knowledge and match practice was. You could suggest it influenced my choice in the off-season."
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