Toby Alderweireld Endorses Vincent Kompany for FIFA President
Toby Alderweireld has a bold idea for the future of world football: hand the keys to FIFA to Vincent Kompany.
The former Belgium and Tottenham defender believes the game’s global governing body needs a president with mud on his boots, not just a background in boardrooms and congress halls. In his eyes, the Bayern Munich manager is the ideal fit.
Kompany, now 40, is already deep into his second football life. He is in charge of German giants Bayern, where he has collected back-to-back Bundesliga titles and quickly imposed his ideas on one of Europe’s most demanding clubs. Before that, he built a decorated playing career in England and Belgium, lifting trophies as a leader and standard-bearer wherever he went.
Alderweireld knows that version of Kompany better than most. The pair shared Belgium’s back line 47 times, anchoring a golden generation that carried their country to the sharp end of major tournaments. Those nights left a mark. They also convinced Alderweireld that Kompany sees the sport in a way few others do.
Speaking to Hajper, Alderweireld revealed that his former captain always talked about reshaping football on a grander scale, even when a future in the dugout was far from certain.
"Who would be my pick to be the next president of FIFA? Vincent Kompany," Alderweireld said. "I never thought before that he wanted to become a manager. He always talked about going on a mission to change football but maybe it’s his mission to protect football. He would be my president, always."
That endorsement lands at a time when current FIFA president Gianni Infantino faces persistent criticism over the direction of the game. Infantino climbed through the administrative ladder at UEFA before taking the top job in Zurich, but never played professionally. For Alderweireld, that matters.
He argues that football’s most powerful voice should come from someone who has actually lived the sport – in cramped dressing rooms, on packed away-day buses, under the floodlights and the pressure.
"It’s very important that the FIFA president is someone who played the game and knows the game," he said. "We've all been a fan. Then we've become a football player. We know both sides. When I was a child, I went to all the away games on the bus. We're not just people who made good money out of playing in the Premier League and Champions League.
"We’re football fans too. We played the game. We know how it is. What it is to be a player and a fan."
His frustration is not abstract. He points to the World Cup as an example of where, in his view, commercial ideas are starting to trample over the essence of the sport.
"The one thing that's very important is that the person who's doing the talking should be a football guy because look at the World Cup. A 20-minute show at half-time? That’s where you need someone who knows football to say no."
For Alderweireld, this is the crux of it. Football’s greatest strength lies in what has been passed down through generations: the rituals, the rhythms, the sense that a match belongs to the people in the stands and the players on the pitch, not to marketing departments.
"The most beautiful thing about the sport is its traditions. New things have their place too but we need to protect the traditions as well and that’s why you need football players, football people who have been around the game, to keep the businessmen in check."
Kompany, already tasked with restoring and redefining Bayern from the touchline, now finds his name thrown into an entirely different debate. Whether he ever sets his sights on FIFA’s top office is another matter. But Alderweireld has drawn a clear line: if football wants to protect its soul, he believes it should be led by one of its own.
