Vincent will soon turn the airwaves blue
THE most wanted footballer in Britain this summer is Vincent Kompany: not to play, but to comment. Sky and BT Sport believe he can solve their Manchester City problem. Here’s the dilemma. Manchester City are, plainly, the strongest force in the Premier League right now. They have also gone deep into the Champions League in consecutive seasons. Their success in the modern era is so new, however, that there isn’t an available player it is felt captures that development. The predicament was exposed in 2011 when Mike Summerbee was engaged to give the blue take on the Manchester derby. Not only, sadly, was Summerbee not a name familiar to a generation that thinks football started in 1992, he turned out to be too trenchantly blue for Sky’s liking — as good as dismissing Wayne Rooney’s stunning bicycle kick as a fluke. Sky appear to have given up on the pretence of impartiality on its panels — how else to explain Gary Neville’s bizarre trolling of Liverpool after the Champions League final — but allegiance cannot be allowed to override reality. And while guests such as Niall Quinn and Paul Dickov do a decent job, this cannot obscure the fact that the Manchester City they knew bore about as much relation to the Sheik Mansour era as 1960s Arsenal did to the time of Arsene Wenger. Not only is Kompany a modern, title-winning Manchester City captain, he is articulate, intelligent and widely respected: the perfect studio fit. The problem for BT and Sky is he appears to have several seasons left, meaning his appearances will be limited for now. Don’t think the ground has not already been laid by both sides, though. On retiring, Kompany will be as sought-after as at any time in his career.