It’s only normal for a footballer, whose professional career tends to be rather short and intense, to want to sometimes branch out, invest some of that hard earned money into various ventures, and perhaps even help the less fortunate along the way.
That’s exactly what Manchester City’s Vincent Kompany was trying to do when, in 2013, he decided to create a football club, BX Brussels, to try and help the city’s youth, a club where ‘the social aspect would be as important as the football’, according to Sport/Foot Magazine.
Four years later, however, very little progress, on the football side of things, has been made, with each ‘ambitious announcement being followed by a setback’.
With dreams the club could end up getting promoted rather quickly, the reality was very different, as the club got relegated to the provincial leagues (Belgium’s seventh tier).
Kompany’s decision to place friends and family within the club’s hierarchy didn’t help progress, with the club’s director of football Junior Ngalula saying: “We were simply in a bad cycle we weren’t able to get out of. That’s football”.
Still the owner, Vincent Kompany receives monthly reports from Ngalula, while his sister, Christelle, is the club’s chairman.
His father Pierre and brother François also lend a helping hand, even if this nepotism has annoyed more than one staff member with a former employee saying: “If you’re not in that group, it’s hard to make yourself heard.
“However, the Kompanys’ name here is everything, and without it, the project would never have been able to take place“.
A project, which, at the end of the day, does help a lot of young people in Brussels, with players needing a 60% average in their school grades to kick a ball for BX Brussels.
Furthermore, the club is also linked to various charities like SOS Villages d’Enfants (of which Kompany is ambassador), Fedasil or the Homeless Cup.
After a few years of stumbling around trying to get everything on the right track, the club has now finally stabilised itself and is currently set for promotion from their division, with the plan being to one day be a part of the national leagues.
It seems Vincent Kompany’s ambitious project is finally going in the right direction.
Something, however, that cannot be said about his attempts at running two sports bars in Brussels and Antwerp.
You can’t win them all.
