In soccer, there are no isolated incidents. Everything is of consequence. With this in mind, it is best to know that each action on the pitch has a ripple effect on the rest of the game -- much like in life -- and thus every failure on the pitch is the result of another failure before it. And the same with each small victory. A forward line fails when delivery is poor, a midfield falters without balance and a defense collapses without proper protection. While keepers ... well, sometimes you just have a Sergio Romero.
Vincent Kompany isn’t ‘back,’ because he was never bad
Don’t be fooled into thinking Vincent Kompany is playing better this year than he did last year. It’s just that his midfield has improved.
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Defenders seem to suffer the most from this little problem. It's become difficult to assess their performances individually rather than as the last wake in a chain of ripples that preceded them. Right now, three games and three victories into Manchester City's season, it's tempting to proclaim that Vincent Kompany is back! He's regained his form, the confidence is flowing and so the swaggering boulder of a man with a head like The Brain is back to bossing and incapacitating measly forwards. Which would be true if he had ever left to begin with.
It’s no secret that Kompany had a poor season last campaign. But more than that, it’s visible that Manchester City as a team performed poorly. And even deeper than that is the fact that those bad performances all seemed to stem from their embarrassing midfield play.
The midfield is the cliched Engine Room. It’s where the structure of the team is built. The engineers in the center mostly dictate the tempo and style of play, so when they fail, the team fails. As destructive as the old Barcelona were, they don’t function without the legendary midfield of Xavi/Andres Iniesta/Sergio Busquets/Yaya Toure. And the recent incarnation finally clicked when Cesc Fabregas was shipped off to London and Ivan Rakitic was brought in to solidify the unit.
The alternative to this is to watch how Arsenal's defense always seems shaky regardless of the personnel. And just how much more solid it looks when the enlivened body of Francis Coquelin is placed at defensive midfield rather than the rotting carcasses of Mathieu Flamini and Mikel Arteta. Or even how Chelsea's famously sturdy defense is crumbling just around the same time that Nemanja Matic is losing his damn mind.
So when Kompany is lunging and failing at making poor tackles in midfield, it must be asked exactly why he was in that overextended position to begin with. It's no coincidence that the City captain had his worst season in correlation with Yaya Toure's and Fernandinho's. It also doesn't help that he was partnered with either the mummified Martin Demichelis or the still adjusting Eliaquim Mangala.
A perfect example of these particular midfield failures trickling down to Kompany’s own lapses was the away leg of City’s Champions League matchup against the aforementioned Barcelona.
In fact, one of the first things Kompany had to do was clear a long Lionel Messi pass to a streaking Neymar out of touch for a corner kick. The pass is gorgeous, the run is perfect and the defending was measured enough to prevent the danger. Yet the truth is that Messi, the best player of all time, was allowed all of the time in the world to pick out a pass from the center circle.
Messi’s fronted by three midfielders before making the pass and none of them bothers to even engage him. The hesitance is understandable as much as it is stupid. It’s Messi sure, but it’s also Messi! Allowing him that much time on the ball is suicidal.
Which leads us to the actual goal conceded a few minutes later by City. It came off a Kompany botched interception that Luis Suarez pounced on. Before that, though, is a scene that seems pirated from Adam Sandler’s Click since the only way to describe it is as being terrifyingly comedic.
There again is Messi. This time he’s receiving the ball after laying off from a throw-in. In front and to the side of him are four Manchester City defenders. None of them pressures him. All of them ball-watch as he delivers the ball to the head of Suarez, who jumps and misses it completely. It ricochets off Kompany and Suarez, ever the opportunist, finds it and smashes it into the far corner.
Another odd thing that happened there is that Demichelis, who was fronting Suarez, stands deathly still as the ball is crossed in. And when it bounces off his captain, he’s so struck by whichever existential crisis he’s suffering at the time to even react. Only after the event does he then acknowledge reality and throw his hands up in despair.
The second goal comes from Jordi Alba driving the ball behind the defenders but just in front of the keeper for Suarez to slide in for his second. But as important as the stagnant defending is what happens just before:
Here Rakitic is driving towards the goal with tons of space in front of him, a simple result of Fernandinho and David Silva being sucked into the left by Alba and Iniesta. The Barcelona midfielders did nothing special; Iniesta dribbled towards and then leaves the ball for Alba, who pinged it back into midfield. That was it.
In this instance, Kompany is left with two choices: Let Rakitic come towards their box unattended or to step up to him. No sane man would choose the former, that’s begging to be scored on. So as he should, he steps up to the Croatian knowing that he has three other defenders beneath him. Rakitic passes to Messi as soon as Kompany slides in, Messi dribbles through the center, passes it to a wide open Alba who then drives it past a recovering Kompany and a daydreaming Demichelis.
This doesn’t happen if Rakitic isn’t given the time and space to study engineering in the center. It doesn’t happen if the midfield does their job.
The examples are endless, not from just this game but the entirety of last season. They’re even more stark when Toure is involved. His infamous brooding act meant that several times Kompany was forced to decide between engaging a man in midfield or letting them come towards him and his defensive partner with other runners flanking them. It’s a “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” conundrum. And the safer choice is always to try to break up the play higher up the pitch.
So what has changed this season? Well shockingly, in these few games, Toure seems to be playing some of his best football. Not only is the Ivorian scoring goals and styling with no-look assists, but he’s also dominating the center as he had in the past. To add to that, Mangala has looked assured and Fernandinho isn’t chasing everything under heaven to make up for his midfield partner’s lack of conviction. And as a result, Kompany has been a rock.
It’s amazing the effect not having to do several jobs at once can have on a player.
So it is alluring to claim that Kompany has somehow been resurrected, but that would also be disingenuous. Minus his injury problems, what has changed the most from this year so far and the last is that his foundation has improved. Last year, the team was in relative shambles from top the bottom: Sergio Aguero was injured every other game, which left the inept Edin Dzeko sending chances into the stands. Toure was disrespected, then he was not, then it had been all about familial issues, before it was not that as well. And in turn Kompany suffered with the rest of the team, his failures being more alarming and critical because of position both as the captain and leader of the defense.
To say that Kompany failed is to admit that everyone else before him did as well. It’s no surprise that when given the option to only do his job, the man does it well. And in praise of his rebirth, credit must rippled down to his protection, too.
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