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Troy Deeney: 'Vincent Kompany is the league's best centre-back since Rio Ferdinand, but if I'm on form he'll have a tough day'
Troy Deeney says he is relishing a “real battle” with Vincent Kompany in the FA Cup Final.
The captains of Watford and Manchester City will go head-to-head at Wembley, with Deeney rating Kompany the best centre-half in the Premier League over the past decade since Rio Ferdinand.
“I haven’t seen a better centre-half since Rio,” the striker said. “Obviously [Virgil] Van Dijk is up there doing it now, but in terms of the 10-year span of Vincent Kompany, Rio Ferdinand was probably the last proper centre-half.”
However Deeney is backing himself to unsettle Kompany and City. “I think if I play well they’ll have had a very difficult day,” he said. “If there’s a lot of crosses in the box, as much as I really respect Mr Kompany, he would say it’s not going to be an easy day… if I’m on my A-game it’ll be a very difficult game for whoever’s playing.
“Me and Vincent Kompany have got a lot of respect for each other, I think. I know I have for him, but based on conversations we’ve had, as well as I know, he knows that whenever we’re going up against each other it’s going to be a real battle. Because he’s naturally physically strong, I enjoy a physical battle, and neither of us are ever going to back down from one another… we’re definitely going to have a few battles and whoever comes out on top will have a massive impact on the game.”
Despite his appetite for the physical side of football there is much more to Deeney’s game. “I don’t mean to be disrespectful but I don’t care what people say about how I play football,” the 30-year-old said.
“My only bit of encouragement comes from when I come off the pitch and a player will say ‘great game’ or this, that or the other. That’s different. I get called fat all the time. You crack on, and it is what it is. You can only change people’s perspective by delivering on the pitch and that’s what I’d like to think I’ve done for the large part of my career.”
Watford will draw inspiration not just from Wigan Athletic’s FA Cup Final win over City in 2013 – and they are a far better team than Wigan who were relegated that year – but also what Deeney claims could be the “year of the underdog” given Liverpool and Tottenham Hotspur’s remarkable comebacks in their Champions League semi-finals.
“You look at Spurs this season, underdog mentality going into the second legs, you would say that no-one really gave Liverpool a chance. So it could be the year of the underdog, who knows? We’re not a bad outfit, we’ll give anyone a game and on our day we can beat anyone. And that’s what we need to do, we need to have our day and hope that Man City have an off day.”
Deeney added: “It’s not going to be career-defining for me. If I don’t win a trophy everyone’s not going to go ‘oh, he’s rubbish’. They think I’m rubbish anyway, so… We’re going to enjoy it. We’re not naïve, this is a massive, massive test, probably the hardest one, but if you want to win trophies, and get into Europe, then you have to play against the best.”