Vincent Kompany on leadership, his coaching journey and making Bayern feared

Vincent Kompany is used to success. Touted as a star during his formative years at Anderlecht, where he won two league titles, he realised his potential at Manchester City. The defender scooped four Premier League titles and two FA Cups and was club captain for most of his time in England.

Now, following spells in charge at Anderlecht and Burnley, the 38-year-old returns to the UEFA Champions League – one of the few trophies that eluded him during his playing career – as Bayern go in search of a seventh European crown.

On what makes a great leader

It would be to be able to put the team before yourself. Very simply. It's easy to say, it's not very easy to do. I was fortunate to be in an environment with a lot of reference points, a lot of leaders. I was lucky to play with Patrick Vieira, Frank Lampard, who were leaders at their clubs for many years, but I also had coaches who were good leaders. Then I also had my parents. And you draw a little bit from everything, but the closest thing to leadership for me will always be what is closest to you, and that remains in everything I try to do.

You earn trust and respect just by trying to be honest, saying what you think, when you think it. A 'say what you mean and mean what you say' type of attitude. You might not always get popularity with it because, as a manager, it's not necessarily possible to always be popular, at least not in the short term.

Bayern coach Vincent KompanyUEFA via Getty Images

On how he developed his leadership as captain of Manchester City

You have different phases in leadership. During my time at Man City as a captain, I probably evolved with it as well – the captain I was in my first phase was not the captain that I was in my last phase. It comes with age, maturity. You transition much more from when you do things for yourself, and you want to be a leader, the strongest, the fastest, the most aggressive, the most important in the team. Whereas when you get a little bit older, you want to be the one that makes everybody around you better, you want to be the one that calms everything down, or that motivates everyone, and I think that transition happens even in your leadership.

On how he has progressed as a coach

I think the best decision I made was to take myself out of my comfort zone. There was an option to remain at the big clubs and continue a youth team trajectory to then, hopefully, maybe promote back to the top, but I went straight into the job and I learned to deal with changing squads, young players, older players, players who can execute certain things but not everything, from difficult situations in terms of results to having the extreme highs of winning nearly everything. So I've experienced all of that and I'm only 38. And it gives me a feeling of having been in a job for a very, very long time now, and that's something that I wouldn't change for anything in the world. It was all fantastic learning.

On how coaching has developed since he started playing

Coaching and football will always keep evolving, and we [had] probably much less tactical information when I started my career. Now you can go to any level in football and you will see tactical detail, you will see a lot of analysis done on the opposition as much as analysis on your own team. That wasn't maybe as much the case when I started, but then at the end of my career it was – and I suppose we're always trying to push those boundaries to see if there's a component we can do individually with the players, if there's something we can add on the pitches. Everybody's trying to push that line to what's going to be next, and that's exciting.

On how important is it to have a clear philosophy and vision, and how to communicate that

It's probably the most important thing: to have clarity. You communicate it every day – clarity is not just tactical, it's just clarity of who you are as a team, who you are as a group. The rest, I think you communicate in different ways. Sometimes it's on a video screen or on the pitch, but it's also your body language, it's the feeling.

I come from Brussels, and we speak so many different languages. Just in Brussels alone, you could be speaking French, Dutch, maybe a little bit of Arabic or Lingala from Congo, Italian, Spanish, it's all mixed. And you find that unless you communicate with people, nobody will do what you want them to do, and that's a big part of what we learn. I take it with me when I communicate with the group.

Communication is also very individual, so there are some things, some messages, that can only be said in a certain way to certain people. But then there are core messages, where they have to accept as well that you are going to communicate in the way that is necessary to achieve your goal. It's crucial, and it's not going to be any less in the future. We try and stay on that line.

On what Bayern represents and their aims in the Champions League

If you play against Bayern, it has to represent an almost impossible mission. I'm not saying it's going to happen straight away, I'm not saying that's where we are right now, but when I played against the very best Bayern teams, they could give you that feeling. It's not like this every year, but some teams have given you that feeling and that's what you remember. For us, it's the goal to come back as quickly as possible to give that feeling to many opponents.

The aims are very simple. You always want the highest level. For us, whenever we speak about any game, any trophy, it's always about trying to win the competition, and the Champions League is obviously the most difficult one. With the teams who have won it in recent years, there are a few who will obviously aim for the same, but it's a special venue for the final and there is a special feeling here about the Champions League.