Alderweireld Endorses Kompany for FIFA President: A Player's Perspective
Toby Alderweireld has made his pick for the future of world football’s most powerful office – and he’s gone straight for a familiar face.
Not a career administrator. Not a lawyer. Vincent Kompany.
The former Belgium and Tottenham defender believes the Bayern Munich manager is the ideal candidate to one day lead FIFA, arguing the global game needs a president forged on the pitch, not in the boardroom.
Kompany, now 40, is in charge of German giants Bayern, where he has already delivered back-to-back Bundesliga titles. His coaching success follows a decorated playing career that brought a stack of trophies in England and Belgium, and cemented his status as one of Europe’s most respected captains.
For Alderweireld, who lined up alongside Kompany 47 times in Belgium’s defence, that résumé is exactly what football’s top job demands.
“Who would be my pick to be the next president of FIFA? Vincent Kompany,” Alderweireld told Hajper. “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 idea, Kompany as guardian rather than just coach, runs through Alderweireld’s argument. He says the Bayern boss was already thinking beyond the touchline long before his boots were hung up, driven by a desire to shape the sport’s future.
The timing of his endorsement is pointed. Gianni Infantino, the current FIFA president, climbed the ladder through UEFA’s administrative ranks and never played professionally. His tenure has faced growing criticism from fans and former players who feel decisions are increasingly driven by commercial interests.
Alderweireld doesn’t hide where he stands in that debate. He believes the people running football often lack the lived experience to protect its culture.
“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.”
Then he went straight for a concrete example. The World Cup, football’s crown jewel, and the push for bigger, glitzier shows around it.
“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 not nostalgia for a vanished past. It is a battle line.
“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.”
In his eyes, Kompany – serial winner, national-team leader, now title-collecting coach – fits that role perfectly. The question is no longer whether ex-players should have a voice in football’s future.
It’s whether one of them might one day sit at the very top.
