Can Vincent Kompany become a decisive factor in the mother of all Belgian elections ?
Last week Roberto Mancini criticized Vincent Kompany because he played for Belgium after being injured for six weeks. Mancini claimed that Kompany should have known that playing for Manchester City is much more important than playing for his national team. I’m afraid he may have made a serious mistake. At the end of the match against Newcastle Mancini substituted Kompany and when he left the field he completely ignored Mancini. For a subdued player like Kompany, this was a rather dramatic gesture and may prove to be a problem for Mancini and his hold over the City dressing room. But this is speculation of course. Let’s ask ourselves why the national team is that important for Kompany.
First of all there is the obvious reason: this is Belgian’s golden generation (until now Belgian players scored 55 goals in the EPL and players like Courtois, Mertens and De Bruyne are extremely important in other competitions, Jorgen Klopp wants to lure De Bruyne to Borussia Dortmund). It’s now or never for this generation, after twelve years of absence these players can lead the Belgian national team finally to another big tournament (but Croatia remains a very tough opponent) where they hope to shine as possible dark horses. But this is not the main reason.
Vincent Kompany is a very atypical football player. He is one of the few players who looks beyond football. Kompany feels an engagement towards Belgium and Brussels. There is the stereotype of Belgium as a country that is falling apart. A country that looks as if will end up like Czechoslavakia: after some sort of divorce Belgium is expected to fall apart in two different miniature states. This is far less a forgone conclusion than most foreigners think. At the moment the biggest party in Flanders is the separtist NVA, but they only have 36% of the votes in halft the country (according to recent polls, that is).
Kompany, national coach Wilmots and the majority of the players see themselves as the last symbols of a unified country.Rumours about past difficulties between Flemish and Walloon players proved to be complete bullshit, there were some intergenerational problems, but the older generation has disappeared apart from Timmy Simons. Vincent Kompany is profiling himself more and more as a political force (his father is a local politician in Elsene, one of the 19 communities that are part of Brussels) and as an opponent of NVA’s very popular Bart De Wever. When De Wever won the Antwerp elections and became the mayor he gave a(n) (in)famous maiden speech. The quote that was mostly used in the Belgian and foreign papers was the following: “Tonight the city belongs to everybody, but especially to us”. Us being the separatist NVA. When a couple of weeks later, Belgium beat Scotland Kompany tweeted the following message: “Tonight Belgium belongs to everybody, but especially to the national football team”. De Wever, who is reputed to attack all his opponents verbally, for once remained silent because he realized that this was a war he couldn’t win.
In the autumn of 2014 Belgium faces what is called the mother of all elections: regional elections in Brussels, Wallonia and Flanders. If the polls are correct NVA will have the Flemish prime minister and people fear that Flanders will ask for a divorce, thereby trying to gain independence. Contrary to what most foreigners think, the average Fleming doesn’t care about separatism and independence. People vote for De Wever and his NVA because they are fed up with thraditional parties and because De Wever became fabulously popular because of a television quiz (this is the honest truth).
As captain of the national team, Kompany is not only very popular in Brussels and Wallonia, but also in Flanders. At the moment the Belgian national team is a major hype among a majority of Belgians. Matches are sold out within minutes and every television show has free tickets for even the most insignificant matches. At the moment the Red Devils are the only symbol of a unified Belgium and both Wilmots (a former senator) and Kompany realize this.
If our national team would go to the 2014 World Cup, this would be smack in the middle of the election campaign and even inadvertently they would become a very powerfull symbol against separatism. If the team would have good results, this might pose a serious threat for De Wever and his NVA. In 1986 the national team ended fourth in the World Cup and this created an unseen wave of nationalism. Suddenly people all over Belgium were buying national flags, something very atypical. Logic rarely applies to football, but more and more Belgians are convinced that this current crop of players is much more talented than the 1986 squad, so quite a lot of people are hoping for an even better result in Brazil. Marouane Fellaini considers Belgium as the favourites for the 2014 WC (i know this sounds outrageous). Kompany himself is more sensible and he has made a public statement that reaching the 2014 WC would already be a major success. More and more political commentators see football success as a serious threat for De Wever and it isn’t hard to imagine that De Wever hopes our national team will have a disastrous campaign, although he is smart enough not to mention this publicly.
Kompany is well aware of this and he is upping the ante. He is in telligent enough to see that football can integrate outcasts. Brussels is the European capital where the difference between the haves and the have nots is the biggest. This is strange in a country where the social differences are minimal. Brussels suffers from a very high unemployment rate among youth and most youths in Brussels have foreign roots like Kompany (Congo) , Witsel (Martinique), Lukaku (Congo), Dembele (Mali), Fellaini (Morocco), Mirallas (Spain) Chadli (Morocco) and Benteke (Congo). For those young people access to employment is particularly difficult. Among quite a few Belgians those young people have a very negative image: they are seen as refusing to work and often ending up in criminality (an image that was supported by what happened to another player of the national team, Mboyo, who has a 16 year old was convicted for a gang rape). Kompany and his team mates are serving as role models for young Belgians from foreign origins. Kompany is also aware of the universal appeal football has on (at least) half of the world population (the male half that is). People from various cultures are football mad and while football can divide people, it has also the power to unite people from various background and culture. An that is why Kompany bought a football club.
Currently FC Bleid is a third division club on the brink of disaster. FC Bleid is a club from the village Bleid in the Luxembourg province, the most southern part of Wallonia. But why am i writing this ? Well FC Bleid will move to Brussels. Since 2012 there are schemes that a group round former international Michel Dewolf (current coach of FC Bleid) wants to relocate FC Bleid to Molenbeek, one of the more underserved parts of Brussels. Molenbeek has a high percentage of youths from foreign origins (most of them have the Belgian nationality but are perceived as trouble making foreigners) and on top of that has a stadium that used to be the home of former first division club RWDM (once champions and once semi-finalist of the UEFA Cup, they used to be my favourite club). This was a sugar daddy club that went bankrupt when the sugar daddy had enough of it. Former players and fans wanted to restart RWDM and the financial diffulties of FC Bleid presented an opportunity. Kompany was well aware of this and he dcided to buy the club. Currently his sister Chrsitelle (former Belgian champion triple jump) is president of the new club that is still called FC Bleid. Once the club will play in Molenbeek (Brussels) it will have a new name (go to the website
www.westartfromscratch.be to propose a name, i proposed Rainbow Brussels) and it will concentrate on the youth of Brussels. Kompany wants to give opportunities, a pass time and a stepping stone to youth not unlike him. By doing this Kompany is one of the few people who does something constructive in underserved parts of Brussels and on tiop of that he has the guts to target a category of people that has perhaps the most negative image among most other Belgians and certainly in Flanders (yes, we are a nice bunch of people !) This club can become another symbol against De Wever and his NVA. Whereas the national team can oppose NVA in it’s separatist ambitions, the new football club will pose another challenge for De Wever. Until now Belgium has a system of social security. Social security is a system that is based on internal solidarity between the rich and the poor people. Intelligent but biased people have calcultated that this solidarity system results in streams of money that go from the northern Flemish part to the southern French speaking part of Belgium. One can compare this with the way Lega Nord looks upon Southern Italy. NVA considers Brussels and Wallonia as underdeveloped and corrupt parts that have the best parts from the solidarity system. The iconic youth from Molenbeek are seen as the worst excesses of social security. Of course this is blatant stereotyping and thus nonsense, but it is a strong negative image that is quite enduring and that is accepted by a large part of the Flemish population. By making those youth the primal target for his club, iconic Kompany makes a statement against De Wever. By doing this, Kompany and his football can become an important factor in national and regional politics. Add to that an immensely popular coach with experience in politics and who profiles himself as one of the last true Belgians and one can see the political implications of a good campaign for our national team.
So it’s not hard to understand that Kompany will do everything for his national team. If the national team fails to reach Brazil, then it could well be that in the next qualifying round Fellaini, Witsel, Van Buyten, Mirallas, Hazard and Benteke will face Vertonghen, Dembele, De Bruyne, Lukaku and Courtois when Wallonia plays Flanders…I’m curious which new country both Kompany and Wilmots will embrace. Perhaps Brussels ?
in general Prishtina was very strong team at home and they always played some good football vs Red Star and Partizan !
