Vincent Kompany: How he leads FC Bayern back to its old class

Things aren’t easy for Vincent Kompany these days. He constantly meets coaches who should have done his job as head coach of FC Bayern Munich. Last Saturday, the 38-year-old faced Bayer Leverkusen and their master coach Xabi Alonso in the Allianz Arena. This Wednesday, Kompany will meet Aston Villa head coach Unai Emery in the Champions League duel in Birmingham. Another one who is said to have been contacted during the coaching search phase, when the Bayern bosses cast the really big net from March to May.

“A lot of names were mentioned, all of which supposedly canceled us,” said Bayern’s sports director Max Eberl on Tuesday afternoon in Munich before the flight to Birmingham. “But I never spoke to Emery. He wasn’t the coach we wanted.”

Kompany is a meticulous worker

Apparently, however, the Spaniard, a Basque like Alonso, was the preferred candidate of Bavaria’s supervisory board member Karl-Heinz Rummenigge. But sports director Max Eberl initially had other candidates in his sights such as Julian Nagelsmann and Ralf Rangnick, both of whom declined. And then Emery extended his stay at Villa until 2027. And that at a time when Bayern’s dream coach Alonso had already signaled to the Munich team that he wanted to continue his mission in Leverkusen.

After all: After the farcical search for a coach, the Munich team seems to have made a really good catch with Kompany. After around eleven weeks in office, the 38-year-old has swum free with his approachable, authentic manner and meticulous work – and earned his first credits. Bayern got off to a confident start: four games, four wins, 16:3 goals, confident leaders in the Bundesliga, and won all competitive games. However, the opponents were: Ulm, Wolfsburg, Bundesliga promoted Kiel, Dinamo Zagreb, which is not ready for the Champions League, and weak Bremen.

With a lot of courage on the offensive – no matter who the opponent is

In the duel with defending champions Leverkusen last Saturday, Kompany proved that he can carry off his risky style of play with high defense even against top clubs. A team registers something like this very precisely. The fact that Alonso subordinated himself to the defensive style of play in Munich and allowed his Leverkusen team, who were bursting with offensive potential, to play “safety first” is thanks to Kompany. “The energy and belief at Bayern is different than last season, you can feel that,” analyzed Alonso with appreciation and explained: “The whole team is putting pressure on them. They give full throttle with and against the ball. You have to make big sacrifices .” It was therefore “very hard” for his team in this 1-1 draw.

The subtext was: It was different than the 3-0 draw in Leverkusen in February or the 2-2 draw in Munich a little over a year ago. This time it was the champions who adapted to the dethroned record champions after their first titleless season since 2011/12. The Kompany Bayern are perceived differently than under their predecessor Tuchel, who mostly only acted out his attack department verbally, but threw a safety net over his team.

Praise from captain Manuel Neuer

The always balanced, rather introverted Kompany revived and tactically reinvented the unsettled, reeling Bavarians in around eleven weeks. “The dominance, the positioning, the self-image and the aggressiveness in the run-up,” emphasized captain Manuel Neuer. “That suits us too.” If we can pull this off, “then it will give us confidence for the season.” Sports director Eberl rejoiced: “Such dominance – that’s a really, really big step. We’ve set an exclamation mark in the way we played football.”

None of this fell from heaven. Coaching sessions under Kompany often last late into the night. Even test matches are prepared with the meticulousness of a Champions League game. Give everything, don’t make a mistake, can’t be blamed for anything. And be humble. That is the credo of Kompany, whose father came to Belgium as a refugee from the Congo in 1975. “What were my chances of playing in the Premier League, winning something as a player and playing in the national team?” he asked and immediately gave the answer: “The probability was 0.000 something. And now I’m a coach .”

Kompany once played under Pep Guardiola

Empathy is at the heart of Kompany’s work. “It’s always important to deal with the players, the human touch. Kompany is honest and open – the players appreciate that,” says Lothar Matthäus, Germany’s most capped player. The former midfielder also sees great progress at Bayern in terms of play. “You can now play, as they say these days. The desire and joy are back. The players no longer have to hold their positions as rigidly as they did in the last year and a half.” In the era of the predecessor. “The players didn’t feel free under Tuchel. They feel safe under Kompany and will go through fire for him. He has captured them and is taking them with him on his journey.” Like Alonso, Kompany always acts positively and constructively on the sidelines, encourages his players and does not turn away in annoyance when mistakes are made like many others in the industry. Like Tuchel or Pep Guardiola, under whom Kompany was once captain and an extended arm on the pitch at Manchester City. For both of them, nagging is part of the motivation to irritate and drive their own team. But he, Kompany, wants to emancipate himself from his teacher. He goes his own way.

In the club, Kompany is called “Vinnie”.

Has he, who is called “Vinnie” by everyone in the club, not already proven that he is the better choice than title collector and man-catcher Alonso? Kompany, born in Uccle, a suburb of Brussels, laughs out loud at the question. He doesn’t like cross-comparisons. “I’m here for the team,” he says calmly but firmly, “everything else is unimportant. I want other people to be successful if they get the most out of themselves because I know how difficult it is. I want my way and I work very, very hard for that and want to earn everything.”

At the beginning of his time in Munich, Kompany often wore a baseball cap and pulled it low over his face. He hadn’t worn these caps as often lately. At the beginning of his time, he switched to English in press conferences when things got tactical or when he didn’t want to be misunderstood when explaining a situation. That has also become less recently. Kompany’s surprise solution hasn’t even been in office for 100 days yet, but it already seems to have arrived. “How long have I been here?” he asked himself recently. And the Belgian seems to have already internalized the “Mia san Mia”, the club DNA of Bavarian steadfastness. “Bayern always has to play its game,” he said, “if there is a team that prevents us from doing that – then hats off!”