Why Bayern boss Kompany is well placed to succeed Guardiola at Man City

At some point in the not-too-distant future, Manchester City will have to hire a coach to succeed Pep Guardiola. Nobody knows if that will be next year, the year after or even three years down the line, but right now, the man who is becoming the obvious candidate is Bayern Munich's Vincent Kompany.

When Bayern face Arsenal in the UEFA Champions League at the Emirates on Wednesday, you could argue that the two coaches with the strongest credentials to replace Guardiola -- Kompany and Arsenal's Mikel Arteta -- will go head-to-head in a battle between the contenders. But although Arteta was Pep's No. 2 at City for three years before taking the Arsenal job in 2019, he has become the embodiment of his own project at the Emirates to the extent that I can't see him jumping ship for City.

I have known Kompany -- let's call him Vinny from now on -- for almost 20 years, going back to when we met through a mutual friend while he was playing for Hamburg in 2008, and I now believe that he really can be the guy who succeeds Pep at City.

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It's all about timing in football -- lots of so-called Pep successors have fallen by the wayside over the years -- and you have to factor in that Vinny is managing a huge, powerful club in Bayern. But as footballer, wherever you are, if you're at Liverpool, Manchester United or wherever, which club would it take for you to leave there? The chances are that it is probably Real Madrid. And I think for Vinny, Man City is probably his Real Madrid.

In my opinion, he would be a perfect fit to replace Pep at some point in the future. You need to be a big personality to follow somebody like Pep Guardiola, and Vinny has that. He also has the political skills to manage above, below and sideways, as well having the connection and love for the club. That is rooted in his 11 years as a player at the Etihad. He won 12 trophies during that period, 11 as club captain, including four Premier League titles.

But I think it's worth outlining Vinny's personality and characteristics before talking about his football philosophy and why it would work for City. When our paths first crossed, he was playing as a No. 10 for Hamburg, alongside Rafael van der Vaart. He had been something of a wonderkid, the kind of young player who was a sensation in video game Championship Manager, but he also immediately struck you as a really cool guy and we said we would keep in touch.

A few months later, by pure coincidence, he ended up joining me at City. Just weeks later, Sheikh Mansour's takeover transformed the club from what we called "Joke City" into the club that is now one of the biggest and most successful in the world.

Vinny was only 22 at the time, but his presence and leadership skills were immediately obvious. He commanded the respect of everybody because this was a guy who could comfortably converse with teammates in English, French, German and Spanish -- any cliques that might have formed were broken down by Vinny because he was a unifying presence.

He is one of those incredibly fortunate or gifted people who excels in anything he does, but he is also big on the importance of hard work alongside innate ability. He's an academic -- he studied for and completed a business degree at the University of Manchester in 2017 while captaining City -- but also a supremely talented footballer.

But while he can be sweet, Vinny can also be direct and he can be angry. I have seen that side of him, because there are certain things he won't tolerate.

I remember playing in a preseason friendly alongside him against Inter Milan in Baltimore in 2010. Inter had just won the Champions League and they were absolutely killing us. We ended up losing 3-0.

But because Vinny was so angry with our performance as a team, he started to take out his frustration on Inter striker Samuel Eto'o, who was one of the best players in the world at the time. Vinny could accept losing, but not when he felt the opposition didn't have to work for it, and he kicked Eto'o all over the pitch.

At half-time, Eto'o spoke to our teammates, Yaya and Kolo Tour, asking them to tell Vinny to calm down a bit because it was only a friendly. When the message reached Vinny, he replied by telling Yaya and Kolo that the more Eto'o complained, the more he would kick him. And that's exactly what he did.

As a teammate, when you see that kind of drive, determination and anger, it raises standards. Vinny could, and did, lead by example, but he also has that fierce winning mentality that defines all great teams and great players.He was the natural leader as the captain at City, and I can see how he has taken that into management in the way that he motivates players.

At Burnley, he wanted the team to press more often and with greater intensity, but he was clever with how he got the message across. Rather than impose his demands on the team as a whole, he would make individual players think that he was tailoring the message and tactics just for them. One of the strikers was on track for 10-15 goals a season, but he wanted to score more, so Vinny convinced him to press higher up the pitch because he would win the ball back in more dangerous positions and, as a consequence, create more chances to score goals. The attacker suddenly had a plan to score more goals, but Vinny had actually convinced one of his forwards to do more defending.

At Bayern, where he knows his team will dominate most games in the Bundesliga, Vinny loads his players will tactical plans to overcome opponents who try to stifle Bayern with different approaches. Some teams will double press, others go to man-to-man, some will defend low, others defend high -- and Vinny has had success by deploying Harry Kane and Jamal Musiala as false No. 9s. Some managers live and die by their philosophies, but sometimes it pays not to be so rigid.

That's why Vinny will have enjoyed the challenge of digging in away to Paris Saint-Germain recently, when Bayern played with 10 players for the whole of the second half and still came away with a win against the European champions. There was a level of grit to it, with periods of suffering, that will have pleased him because that kind of resilience and spirit is what wins you things at the end of a season.

Vinny is working under constant pressure at Bayern. They expect to win the league every season and conquer Europe. Despite many people doubting his credentials when he took the job after being relegated with Burnley 18 months ago, he has proved them wrong and earned himself a new contract as a reward.