‘AND here’s to you, Vincent Kompany, City loves you more than you will know’.
To the tune of Mrs Robinson, that is the song that has chimed from the Etihad and beyond in recent years, and on Wednesday evening, throughout a testimonial featuring an array of lesser legends, Manchester City fans will have a final, most poignant opportunity to relay that message to the man himself.
He is a man who arrived a week before the takeover and became the extravagant project’s heart and soul. He instated honour onto the honours because to the great many jealous cynics across the public and media alike, turned off by the accelerated power-grab, he was unfailingly a totem of dignity and class. That shouldn’t be very important. It is very important.
He is a man who arrived as a central midfielder and left as one of the finest centre-backs the Premier League has ever seen.
He is a man who arrived for just £8m and left forever an adopted Manc and forever our captain.
As pertinent as his performances he helped maintain a connection between a fan-base and a club unfathomably transforming before our eyes. It could easily have been where these alien beings with their supernatural ability felt like a world away from previous favourites, mortal but ours. But there was Vinny, the best of them; and he ‘got’ us. He ‘got’ the club. He ‘got’ the city. His primal celebration after heading home the winner against United in 2012 confirmed that. A footballer scored the goal. A fan turned away and howled at the moon.
“Where do you want your statue?” Gary Neville asked, after he unleashed a long-range title-turning screamer against Leicester last term. Really though, for symbolism’s sake, the community bridge that links the Etihad Stadium to the academy should be named after him. More than anybody else in a sky-blue jersey or manager’s suit it was he who took us from there to here; from mediocrity to a land of make believe.
‘And here’s to you, Vincent Kompany, City loves you more than you will know’.
Vincent Kompany’s star-studded testimonial is looking fine pic.twitter.com/2Xgvqwbx65
— ESPN UK (@ESPNUK) September 4, 2019
For a good while I’ve wanted to meet whoever came up with that chant and buy him, or her, a drink in gratitude because it’s absolutely perfect. It encapsulates the impossibility of encapsulating our admiration and adoration of Vinny, a player who personally speaking is the only hero I’ve had as an adult. He’s the first since my teenage habit of meticulously preserving copies of the NME whenever they had the Stone Roses on the cover. The first since I used to peer spellbound at a bedroom poster of Muhammad Ali.
As a kid it’s fine to look up to your idols but then you get a bit long in the tooth and it becomes the norm to instead look them in the eye; to shake their hand should you be privileged enough to encounter them and then pretend the autograph you request is for a son or nephew.
Vinny is the exception to this rule for me and how could that not be the case because he is infinitely more than a mere, brilliant sportsman. His Tackle4MCR charity that addresses Manchester’s homelessness crisis will have raised over £1m by the week’s end. Via SOS Children’s Villages he is responsible for creating a safe haven for a hundred orphans in DR Congo. In Brussels he is the chairman of a lower-tier football club that encourages individual advancement and education for youngsters.
His father was a political refugee who went on to be Belgium’s first black mayor. His mother was a union leader. In his DNA is a social conscience to fight for those who have the odds stacked against them.
He is a colossus on the pitch and an amazing person off it. I chose my hero well.
‘And here’s to you, Vincent Kompany, City loves you more than you will know’.
Woah woah woah. In 265 appearances he won four league titles, two FA Cups, and four League Cups or more accurately he propelled and inspired his team to these rarefied heights and all while putting in 200-plus defensive masterclasses for good measure. He was installed into the PFA Team of the Year for three consecutive seasons.
For a sustained period, until a succession of injuries took their toll, he was peerless and commanding; a Belgian Baresi no less who cloaked an ultra-competitive brutality with innate style. A recently retired Premier League forward told me over the summer that he used to hate playing against Vinny because should he drop short, he just knew his marker would ruthlessly come through the back of him. And he’d get away with it too more times than not, by virtue of being so eloquent and charming to the ref. It used to drive this forward mad.
“Man City has given me everything,” my only adult hero said on announcing his departure. “I’ve tried to give back as much as I possibly could.” It was more than enough Vinny. It was everything in return.
