Vincent Kompany explains Man City ‘advantage’ in Champions League final

Vincent Kompany has said Manchester City’s experience in cup finals could be a big ‘advantage’ ahead of Saturday’s Champions League showdown against Inter Milan.

City meet the Nerazzurri at the Ataturk Olympic Stadium on Saturday and will hope to win the Champions League for the first time in the club’s history. It’s a feat Kompany never achieved in nine years at the Etihad, but the Belgian feels the nous his former side have developed from winning trophies in recent years could be huge going into the final.

The Burnley manager was speaking to Gary Neville in the latest episode of The Overlap and said he expects the City players to be relaxed in the build-up to the clash with Inter. “It’s a team that’s won so much so they will be as calm as you can imagine,” claimed Kompany.

“They will do what they’ve done all season – they’ll go home, play with the kids, have a bit of a session, have meetings about the opposition – and they’ll go into the game like any other. I think that is the advantage when you’ve played in a lot of cup finals, you learn that it’s just another game.

“They have one big advantage now,” Kompany added. “They’ve got a six or seven-year library of solutions they’ve had to come up with against different teams, whereas in the beginning, teams hadn’t adapted that much yet, so the one style we had was unbelievable.”

Kompany played 360 times for City and won four Premier League titles, the FA Cup on two occasions and also has four winners’ medals in the EFL Cup.