Vince speaks more sense than any footballer alive.
Quote:
Manchester City captain Vincent Kompany has revealed he had offers from elsewhere before penning a six-year deal at the Etihad Stadium.
Kompany has emerged as one of the finest defenders in the world since joining City from Hamburg in 2008 and has played a pivotal role in the club's trophy success in recent seasons.
But the 26-year-old Belgium international wants more glory after admitting he is now emotionally invested at City - and he wants to keep the titles coming.
"I've signed a six-year deal, so there are six possible titles within those years," said Kompany. "So you know what? I want to get them all.
"It probably won't happen, but we'll see in six years' time. I'll try everything for that.
"I'm not going to give names, but the opportunity was there for me to start negotiating with other clubs.
"It's only normal when you win the Premier League - or have a couple of good seasons - that you get interest at the end of the season.
"But I wanted to stay at City and I think the six-year deal is a statement of my ambitions at the club.
"I've had a good spell here and it would have been easy to play clubs against each other, but it wasn't my intention.
"When I joined City four years ago, I came a month before the takeover. When that happened, without knowing it, their project became mine as well.
"So I do have ties to the project, and also to the fans and the city, which makes it very exciting for me to stay at the club for a long period."
City claimed the Premier League title in dramatic fashion after scoring twice in injury-time on the last day to pip rivals Manchester United and win the league for the first time in 44 years.
Kompany knows it won't get any easier and credits the team's obsession with winning under Roberto Mancini as key to their success.
"Before I won the league, I didn't think I could win it so I prepared twice as much as others and did everything to win it," added the former Anderlecht man.
"It was an obsession for us and myself, so I just hope we keep that obsession.
"You can walk around thinking you're a winner, but if you don't train like a winner or do everything in your life to maintain being a winner, it just stops there.
"So every day of my life I'm still obsessed by this moment, by the victory at the end of the season. It's what I want to have again.
"It's clear we have a competition on our hands. You can clearly see all the other teams have reacted to what happened last season and come out stronger.
"But I think we'll come out stronger too because we're one season further down the line in terms of playing together.
"That was always our problem, the fact that we hadn't gelled over a long period of time.
"But you can see now that we know each other better on the pitch now and that will be our competitive advantage for next season."
The season wasn't without its difficulties with City appearing to implode at several key moments as temperamental figures such as Carlos Tevez and Mario Balotelli threatened to undermine their efforts.
Tevez refused to warm-up against Bayern Munich in the UEFA Champions League, leading to a fall-out with Mancini, while Balotelli was recklessly sent off in a seemingly devastating defeat at Arsenal.
But ultimately both men played important roles in the triumph and Kompany believes the team's mental strength was evident in the way they overcame those low points.
"There was a lot of talk out there last season about how everything was going wrong," said Kompany. "But the one thing we managed to do, in whatever situation we found ourselves, was focus very quickly back on the football.
"On the back of the Bayern Munich defeat we won 4-0 at Blackburn - which is always a very difficult away game.
"And on the back of the Arsenal defeat we had six wins in a row to win the league, so we've shown our strength in terms of our mentality.
"There are a lot of teams that probably wouldn't have coped as well as we did with those kinds of events happening.
"But I guess that's the nature of playing for City - you get used to those things and you just keep going forward.
"That's what we did, and the main thing is that those players managed to have a positive impact on our season."
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