http://bit.ly/o52UpE Equestrian sport By Dainis Matisons

Activity centre KLEISTI, Riga, Latvia
Manchester City's Vincent Kompany is regarded by some as the finest defender in the Premier League. Photograph: Gareth Copley/PA Wire

Should Manchester City's excellent, expensively made journey stop with a European Cup or the Premier League trophy, the odds are that Vincent Kompany will be the guy to raise it. Regardless of all the consideration concentrated on what Samir Nasri referred to this week as the new galácticos, it is fitting that the man who will possibly be charged with leading Metropolis is a defender, nevertheless elegant.
During the club's golden a long time, when Maine Street played host to Malcolm Allison's cigars and the quicksilver brilliance of Colin Bell, the crew ended up led by Tony Book, a one particular-time apprentice bricklayer who started his profession with Frome Town.
It is unlikely that when he returns to fitness the captaincy will return from Kompany to Carlos Tevez. Frankly, there have been as well a lot of betrayals for that. Kompany has not complained about the city or its absence of eating places and, acquiring grown up in one particular of the plusher suburbs of Brussels, he has in no way hankered for the Mediterranean. The Belgian predates, if only by 9 days, the Abu Dhabi revolution. He has married a neighborhood lady and, if there might be as well a lot red in Carla Kompany's loved ones for his liking, it is little by little turning blue. "I like Mancunians, I really feel very good right here. It feels like home."
Kompany, who will lead the team at Spurs nowadays, was not mindful of Nasri's galácticos reference. "It appears a bit pretentious, but it is the best factor we have been known as in a extended time," he says. "But there is not a lot stage in talking about what we are heading to do we have completed some things, but we have massive ambitions.
"I have realized that individuals who keep the calmest get the most reward. I started beneath Mark Hughes and, even even though I'd had a great season, Joleon Lescott and Kolo Touré then came in. It was a scenario of: 'What are you going to do? Cry about it or grow to be far better?' And, if they are better than you, then you must find out from them."
Kompany not only learnt from individuals all around him by previous year he was staying talked about by judges this kind of as Martin Keown as the very best defender the Premier League had to supply.
He has created the kind of measured, potent understatement that comes with authority. Asked if Manchester Town have the squad to cope with the twin demands of a tilt for a 1st championship considering that E-book lifted the trophy in 1968 and a Champions League group that includes Bayern Munich, Villarreal and Napoli, he states: "I was training the other day and in my crew the strikers ended up Agüero, Balotelli and Nasri. On the other facet there was Dzeko, Tevez, Silva and Yaya Touré. I wish it answers your problem.
"Can we win the league? What I would say is this. As quickly as Robinho was signed, men and women have been chatting about us successful the title and I understood it was not going to transpire. But we completed 10th and the challenge the period afterwards was to do much better. Exactly where we are now is we have completed equal 2nd on the identical amount of details as Chelsea. If you want to do better than this, you have to be competing for the title. But there are 4 or 5 excellent groups and there is no assure at all."
It is the other club in Manchester who have perfected the principle of a siege mentality but it exists at City, mostly since Roberto Mancini's squad are weary of the continuous references to how much they generate and what the whole oil-funded projects fees. "We have been battered for the past a few decades and that has helped me really like this club much more because we have been in a corner most of the time," he says. "It is always the dollars. What else can it be? I appear at it from the inside and what this club does for the group is unbelievable. What it does for its supporters is extraordinary.
"I go through someplace that I wasn't delighted with what some of the other players were getting paid out. That could not be more from the truth. If an individual arrives to Manchester City on the Queen's wages, I will not treatment. I have been brought up with the feeling that if a person does properly for himself then I am content. I have in no way suffered from jealousy."
And, echoing a sentiment E-book would recognise, he adds: "When I was growing up, I was not crying in my room every single day since other boys had more than me."