Vincent Kompanycoach of Bayern Munichspoke at a press conference on the eve of the German Cup match against Bayer Leverkusen, thus speaking about the absence of Harry Kane: “It’s always difficult to say how long he’ll be out. There’s a possibility he’ll play again this year, but he’ll miss a few games.”
How will you replace Harry Kane?
“He cannot be replaced, he is a top player, but we will solve the issue differently, tomorrow we will not lack talent. We have options who can play in that position, Thomas Muller, Mathys Tel, Gnabry, Michael Olise, Leroy Sane, Jamal Musiala. These are players who have the ability to score goals. As I said, you can’t replace Harry Kane’s goals, but we have options.”
What did the Christmas party leave you with?
“We don’t have many days off. Yesterday was very nice, we had a big party, even with all the families. We are like a family and we want to live like this. We forgot about the match for a while, but then we went straight back to work.”
Will Gnabry be there tomorrow?
“We will have to wait and see in the last training session, we will have to wait for the last hours before the match.”
Are there similarities between you and Xabi Alonso?
“As a player, I was very far from Xabi Alonso on the pitch because I was a defender. As a player, he always found his teammates with passes, no matter how far away, he had an incredible passing ability. But now we are coaches and we live for it against Dortmund it was against Nuri Şahin, now it’s against Xabi Alonso. I think he will transfer his experience to his players because he knows the game. You can look at the last ten, fifteen games against Leverkusen press very high. They play very aggressively and compactly. In the first part of the season they were very compact and very flexible in their system. We have to be careful and bring our strengths to the pitch.”
What team is Leverkusen?
“We have played against almost every team in the league. The Leverkusen team is among the best. They have very good attackers. They know how to defend deep and they did it against us in the league match. I don’t know if they will deal with things this time in the same way. I hope that tomorrow we can play to our strengths and focus on ourselves, regardless of how Leverkusen play.”
How difficult is it to become a coach after being a player?
“There are two paths: you were a player and then you became a coach or you decide early on to become a coach. You can’t underestimate the amount of work you have to do to go from player to coach. Time management is completely different. I tried to use a lot of software, to analyze the matches and to remain authentic. The result of being here is the fruit of hard work. I benefited from my experience as a leader as a player hard work is important.”