Vincent Kompany has said he is still hurt by Manchester City’s 2013 FA Cup final defeat to Wigan Athletic.
After beating Chelsea in the semi-final, the Citizens faced off against Wigan in the final at Wembley Stadium, only for them to suffer a shock 1-0 defeat thanks to a goal from Ben Watson.
Having now put his playing days behind him and now focusing on his upcoming Premier League campaign in charge of Burnley, the Belgian has looked back over what he describes as one of his worst moments at City.
Kompany reflects on 2013 FA Cup final defeat
Speaking to Gary Neville in a recent video on The Overlap, Kompany said this when asked about what went wrong in that final.
He said: “That one hurts me more than losing the Champions League semi-final to Real Madrid because it’s an easy one.
“Roberto [Martinez] had the team and he got them going and they were well set up and we were at the end of a story with our team.
“The relationships were a bit of a drain and it needed a reboot and we’d gone into that game thinking it was already done before we played it and we got punished. That was a painful one but the party afterwards was brilliant.”
After seeing Pablo Zabaleta get sent off in the 84th minute of the match, Roberto Mancini’s side conceded the only goal of the game in injury time, resulting in a disappointing day for the Citizens but a historic one for Wigan.
Just a few days after this final, City sacked Mancini due to him failing “to achieve any of the club’s targets” for the season aside from securing Champions League football.
Bearing in mind how Wigan ended the 2012/13 Premier League season by being relegated to the Championship, this highlights how disappointing it was for a side like City, who has won the league the season before, to lose the FA Cup final.
It also makes it easy to see why Kompany sees it as one of his most painful moments across his 11 years at City, as it would have been a very tough one for the fans to take as well.
