Kevin De Bruyne’s rise has been remarkable and it is fair to say that he has reached a different level this season. He is not in the Cristiano Ronaldo-Lionel Messi bracket but perhaps just beneath that. His performances for City have stood out, the best player in the best team, and this week (in the Champions League tie against Napoli) there was a flash of that anger, that stubbornness, that sets him apart.
Most of the time he is the quietest, most amenable man – 99% of the time he is, in his own words, “super chilled”. However, every now and then, as we saw at half-time in the Champions League game against Napoli, he erupts and reacts with a fury that few people in England have witnessed.
“Let me talk! Let me talk! LET ME TALK!” De Bruyne shouted at David Silva as he tried to get past his team-mate to admonish the officials, having been booked. He was eventually led away by team-mates and said afterwards: “That argument was over a minute later. It was like one of the ones I have with my wife. At the highest level a discussion can be good sometimes to get everyone back on their toes.” He was back in “super chilled” mode.
De Bruyne’s best friends call him the “tumble dryer”, because he often replies to WhatsApp messages in a very dry manner. He is the same off the pitch as on it. Most of the time he is modest, calm and collected, but when he doesn’t agree with something, he will let everyone know in a brutally honest way.
“He slept in Liverpool bed linen, wore the tracksuit and a Michael Owen replica shirt was the pride of his collection.”
His frankness, strong will and single-minded pursuit of his goals have been with him for ever. When he was 11, he told his mum out of the blue: “I want to study Latin for two years, then I’ll go to the Topsport School and when I’m 18 I will fully focus on my football.” It was a plan he stuck to.
At home in Drongen, his bedroom was plastered with Liverpool paraphernalia. His mother, a Belgian born in Burundi and who grew up in London, as well as his grandfather instilled in him a passion for Liverpool. The young De Bruyne slept in Liverpool bed linen, he wore LFC tracksuits and a worn-out Michael Owen replica shirt was the pride of his collection.
Throughout De Bruyne’s early career, he had to fight the perception that he was a difficult character. Aged eight he told his VV Drongen coach that he was joining Gent “because their training sessions are much better”.
At Gent one of the coaches made it his mission to “tame” De Bruyne. It backfired. De Bruyne, already very self-critical, did not understand why the coach was always on his back, even though he was performing well. He joined Genk, at the age of 14, leaving home to try his luck on the other side of the country because he liked their style of play.
Fast forward to September 2013, De Bruyne was now at Chelsea and for the first time in years his attitude was questioned again. There had been little sign of that coming. De Bruyne had enjoyed a good loan spell at Werder Bremen and Jürgen Klopp was desperate to sign him for Borussia Dortmund as Mario Götze’s replacement, bombarding the Belgian with phone calls and texts. They agreed personal terms and De Bruyne asked Chelsea if he could leave but José Mourinho phoned him and told him he was a good player and going nowhere.
He did not get many chances, however, and his mood worsened after being publicly rebuked by Mourinho after a disappointing performance against Swindon in the League Cup. “I didn’t like the match he played against Swindon and I didn’t like the way he was training,” the manager said.
In November, after only a handful of minutes in the League Cup and Champions League, he decided he wanted to take his future into his own hands. He did not fancy becoming one of Chelsea’s serial loanees and pushed for a transfer. It was mid-December when he met his agent, Mourinho and the board. Wolfsburg took a calculated gamble by paying €25m fro him, an investment they will never regret. De Bruyne had a point to prove and we know what happened next.
The current Chelsea manager, Antonio Conte, talked of his frustration that the club had let De Bruyne go, after the Belgian scored City’s winner in September’s league meeting at Stamford Bridge. It is clear that Pep Guardiola has got much more out of De Bruyne than Mourinho did but then the player is older and wiser and every setback seems to have made him more determined to succeed. With Guardiola, he has clicked. “Tactically he’s the best manager I have ever worked with,” De Bruyne has said. “We think about football in a similar way. I like his style and understand his ideas quickly. That’s one of the reasons I feel so good.”
In Guardiola’s game of geometry and triangles, De Bruyne is the segment that connects them all. In a slightly deeper role than before he is at the heart of all attacks.
He is a player who has never signed a contract with the aim of earning as much as possible. He is a person who still thinks twice before buying something expensive and he once walked out of bar when he found out that they charged £26 for a bottle of Coca-Cola. Outside football he loves nothing more than spending time with those who matter most to him, his wife Michèle, his son Mason Milian and a small circle of close friends. Last season he celebrated a stellar performance against Manchester United with a take-away and a swim with his son.
Guardiola has pushed De Bruyne to another galaxy, constantly comparing him to the world’s best, but the praise slides off him like Teflon. He is determined to stay the way he is: a gem without the bling. Just Kevin: excellence simply delivered.
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