Vincent Kompany
Another new era begins under the ex-Belgium skipper Kompany wanted to reintroduce his boyhood club to a possession-based game by copying Guardiola’s style
Anderlecht, once Belgium’s most potent club, has a new messiah – again. Vincent Kompany, longtime ex-captain of Manchester City and ambassador for an ebullient generation of Belgian players, is the new head coach at the Brussels-based club. In August, Kompany unexpectedly announced his retirement as a player following a career that spanned 17 years at the highest level, marked equally by triumphs and recurring injuries. He led City to their first-ever Premier League title and won a bronze medal with Belgium at the 2018 World Cup in Russia.
Kompany’s shock decision prompted a debate on his place in the pantheon of Belgian football gods, but his more immediate concern will be to restore Anderlecht to their former glory. For too long, internal power struggles, financial mismanagement and a woeful transfer policy have blighted the club.
If this is all sounding very familiar, that’s because it’s happened before. Last summer, Anderlecht plotted to rebuild and compete again in Belgium and Europe. Embattled owner Marc Coucke, sporting director Michael Verschueren and technical director Frank Arnesen landed a major coup: Kompany returned to the Belgian capital as a player-manager in a bid to reconnect with the “Champagne football” that French coach Pierre Sinibaldi introduced in Brussels in the 1960s.
The recruitment process carried on with marquee signing Samir Nasri and loanee Nacer Chadli from Monaco. In England, Kompany benefited from the stewardship of Pep Guardiola, the guru of contemporary coaching with his bold, attractive philosophy based on pressing, positioning and passing. The Belgian said training under Guardiola was like attending university: you’d learn new things every single day.
Kompany wanted to reintroduce his boyhood club to a possession-based game by copying Guardiola’s style – to build up play from the back and recover the ball as quickly as possible when out of possession. The idea was presented as a long-term “project.” He had few detractors, even if the new blueprint was hardly fool proof: did Kompany have any coaching credentials? Would the dual role not be too demanding? Did the quality of Anderlecht’s squad remotely match the tactical system and playing style Kompany envisioned? The Anderlecht hierarchy bypassed a whole series of relevant questions. Kompany, icon, was to carry the club on his shoulders into a new era.
After all the brouhaha, he failed to translate the theory into practice. Slow, ineffective and impotent, Anderlecht slumped to six points from 27, enduring their worst domestic run since 1922. It was a stark reality check for Kompany and Anderlecht felt compelled to bring in the experienced Frank Vercauteren as his assistant to steady the ship. Arnesen, best known for his role as sporting director at both Tottenham Hotspur and Chelsea, exited the club, presaging a tumultuous second half of the season with endless boardroom shuffles.
Karel Van Eetvelt, former chairman of the Belgian Union of Independent Entrepreneurs, became the club’s CEO, and ex-journalist turned businessman Wouter Vandenhaute succeeded Coucke as chairman – a significant step back for the club’s owner. In 2017, he had acquired Anderlecht after a bidding war against Vandenhaute. The boardroom restructuring, with Kompany becoming a shareholder as well, was dressed up as a new start, but reflected the malaise at a club burdened by debts. In 2018-19, Anderlecht registered a mammoth loss of €27 million.
On the field, the coaching of Vercauteren with his penchant for organisation and discipline yielded a respectable eighth-place finish.
But in the first week of 2020-21, the strained relationship between Kompany and Vercauteren came to a head over coaching responsibilities. The former won the boardroom battle and ousted Vercauteren.
Thus begins Kompany-ball 2.0. The youngest Anderlecht head coach since 1945 still brims with confidence and incessantly articulates his football philosophy, without any hint of introspection. He doesn’t countenance failure. This season, however, there won’t be any mitigating circumstances for him to invoke. He will be solely responsible and subject to the same scrutiny every coach faces in football’s zero-sum environment.
Underwhelming, early-season draws with Mouscron and Oostende were perhaps the portent of another difficult season for Anderlecht and Kompany. In a thinly-manned Anderlecht squad, teenage prodigies Yari Verschaeren and Jeremy Doku will be key for the new coach to prove that he is more than simply the latest Guardiola copycat. Kompany’s honeymoon then has truly come to an end.