Vincent Kompany has had to wait until his fourth decade to grace a World Cup pitch and now that he is in Brazil, he risks having his greatest moment taken away.
Should that be the case, it will be a case of same old, same old for the Belgium centre-back, who has been blighted by injuries throughout his career.
Aged 30, the Manchester City defender, who captains club and country, has missed around two full seasons of his career in total due to various physical problems.
Click here to visit The National’s World Cup 2014 landing page
And now, just three days away from the Red Devils’ last 16 clash with the United States, Kompany once again missed training on Saturday due to a groin strain that has kept him off the training ground since Wednesday.
It has led to concern from both Belgium coach Marc Wilmots and the country’s fans that their best player might not be fit for the second round encounter in Salvador.
For Kompany to miss his finest hour in an international jersey would be a travesty for such an important player.
“Alongside Axel (Witsel), he’s my messenger on the pitch,” said Wilmots.
For his team-mates, he is indispensable.
“Vincent knows how to make sacrifices. He’s always been there for the team when he needed to be. He knows how to overcome physical pain. I’m sure he’ll be with us,” said left-back Jan Vertonghen.
He missed a few games during Belgium’s qualification campaign for the World Cup yet they still remained unbeaten.
“Maybe but in the friendlies against Colombia and Japan, Vincent’s absence was obvious,” said Thomas Vermaelen recently, referring to two defeats in November last year.
“The defence was leaking water by making positional mistakes that he wouldn’t have made.”
It’s not just at international level that his talent and influence has been noted, in the club game City’s rivals have also come to notice a marked difference.
“A team with Kompany is not the same without him,” said Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger in the spring.
“Manchester City without Kompany are nowhere near as good.”
Wenger’s assertion is borne out by the statistics. With Kompany, City win two thirds of their matches but without him that drops to less than one in two.
The problem is, though, that Kompany is regularly on the sidelines.
He puts that down to his all-action, full-blooded style.
“It’s difficult to talk about that. Since the start of my career I’ve always done everything in my power to avoid injuries,” he said around a month ago.
“If I can be spared (from injury) during the World Cup, I would be the happiest of all.”
But he insists he has no fear of injuries.
“I never think about it, I always give my all.”
According to Belgium’s team doctor, Chris Van Crombrugge, it is Kompany’s physical strengths that contribute to his problems.
“Vincent is no more fragile than any other international player,” he told the Saturday edition of Belgian Le Soir newspaper.
“But his musculature is above average, which grants him an explosiveness and speed of movement that increases the risk factor due to the demands of the Premier League where the matches build up with hellish regularity and where there is no winter break.”
Follow us on Twitter @SprtNationalUAE
