Vincent Kompany, Manchester City and a bittersweet symphony

Vincent Kompany’s Manchester City career hasn’t always gone to plan, but without the bitter the sweet is never as sweet.

Vincent Kompany’s 70th-minute wonder strike against Leicester on Monday put Manchester City in control of a remarkable Premier League title race that will come to a close this weekend. It also brought to mind another Kompany goal years prior that helped usher in City’s current run of glory, while also raising the bittersweet question of what greater glories might have been had things gone differently for the man and the club.

With a win Sunday at Brighton, City will become the first Premier League side to win consecutive titles since Manchester United 10 years ago. Between the Premier League’s birth in 1992 and 2011, United repeated as champs twice and three-peated on two other occasions. 2012 would have been a third three-peat if not for City’s last-day, last-second miracle finish against Queens Park Rangers. But there would have been no miracle that day if not for what Kompany had done a fortnight earlier in the Manchester derby.

Over nearly three months prior to the derby, United took 34 of a possible 36 points before stumbling, losing to Wigan and blowing a late two-goal lead at Old Trafford to draw with Everton. City won three in a row leading up to the derby, but United still enjoyed a three-point lead and came to the Etihad content to play for a draw. One header later, the captain and the club’s fortunes have mirrored each other’s, for better or worse, ever since.

This time around it’s Liverpool, English football’s other historical superpower, neck-and-neck with City in the title race. Jurgen Klopp’s side have lost just one game all year, to City, a match befitting the razor-thin margin separating the squads this season.

https://twitter.com/scottmcfc_/status/1101121958429814785

While City’s winning streak now stands at 13, Liverpool have taken eight straight. Just like United in 2012, it was another former champion, Leicester, who came to the blue side of Manchester late in the season content to draw. Just like United in 2012, Kompany provided the margin of victory.

His goal against United came when “Typical City” was still a slur. “Typical City” meant decade after decade after decade without a trophy; dribbling out the clock content with a draw when needing a win to escape relegation; being the only top-flight English side to win the league one season and be relegated the next. Now, with a fourth league title in eight years and a domestic treble in reach, “typical” means winning 13 matches in a row when nothing less will do, 10 of them clean sheets; scoring goals early and often; scoring later, too, when needed.

Yet all the petrodollars and starry transfers and silverware has brought more lows than the most cynical skeptics or dreamy supporters could have foreseen. A seemingly never-ending string of health problems have cost Kompany 600 injury days from 2012 through this season, turning the Belgian from the bulwark of the defense to at best a best-case-scenario in City’s starting XI. In 2013 City finished second; Kompany missed 45 days due to injury. In 2015 they were once again runners-up; he lost 59 days that season. The club’s nadir paralleled his own: In 2016 and 2017 City finished fourth and third, while the captain missed 136 and 225 days, respectively, with a variety of ailments.

Guardiola admitted Kompany’s injuries led the club to hesitate when considering a new contract, though after the Leicester winner there’s talk City have offered a one-year extension. What is Kompany’s legacy? He is undoubtedly a major figure in the club’s history, and his superb performance in the pivotal January win over Liverpool served notice there is still greatness in store. But what might have been?

City’s trajectory as a team has been just as mixed. In a league possessing more parity at the top than its continental counterparts, English football’s most dominant side these past two years has dropped just 30 points in that time; Chelsea, in third place, have dropped 40 this year alone. City’s 195 points over two scintillating seasons, the 197 goals scored, the 148 goal differential — staggering, all.

And yet, English football’s dominant side have been eliminated in consecutive Champions League quarterfinals by English teams. It’s not the ballyhooed Guardiola but rather former City and current West Ham manager Manuel Pellegrini who led City as far as the Champions League semi — the same Pellegrini who endured the indignity of Pep being named his successor with three months and a quadruple chase still in play in 2016.

A league title, especially over a club with Liverpool’s quality, is still a big deal, and will be celebrated as such. But slip up at Falmer Stadium Sunday and it’s possible Liverpool achieve the Premier League and Champions League double. Even if City win the league, Sheik Mansour didn’t bring in Guardiola to replicate hardware Pellegrini and Robert Mancini already won. If there is no European glory, where does this stretch by City stand, historically? These are the best years in their history. But what might have been?

Kompany’s goal in 2012 didn’t win the title, but without it Sergio Aguero never becomes AGUEROOOO. Kompany’s goal Monday didn’t win a title, either, and it may not; as the Red Devils forced City to fight to the season’s last kick then, the Reds show no let-up now. The only players besides Kompany still at the club from the QPR game, Aguero and David Silva, are human highlight films. Kompany is not. He is a reminder of the fragility of greatness. He could have been something more. The same goes for Manchester City. But if after 90 minutes Sunday morning they are champions, the captain and the club will have shown again that without the bitter, the sweet is never as sweet.