Kevin De Bruyne is leavingManchester City, and I’m going through all five stages of grief at once. Denial (the club will give him a new contract); anger (how could they not renew his contract?), bargaining (at 33, he’s past his peak and injury prone), depression (life without Kev is no life) and acceptance (it was never going to last, and I not only got to watch him for 10 years, I got to meet him.)
They say you should never meet your heroes. I’ve always stood by that maxim when it came to Manchester City players, with the one exception. OhKevin De Bruyne. (For the uninitiated, chant endlessly to the chorus of Seven Nation Army.) As De Bruyne is a law unto himself as a player, so he is as an interviewee.
Most footballers stick to set rules when you interview them – don’t ask about my family and private life, don’t come anywhere near my home, don’t outstay your welcome (a minder will always be there to ensure you leave at the required time). De Bruyne couldn’t be more different. I was toldI could interview him for our Saturday magazine, so long as I went to his house, met his wife and children, spent quality time with them and didn’t just drone on about bloody football.
It was a dream. As his entire City career has been.
I’ve never seen anybody play football like De Bruyne – that astonishing combination of strength, pace, vision and grace. He is a winger and a No 10, a playmaker and powerhouse all for the price of one. Whereas dribblers tend to find their natural home on the more secluded wings, De Bruyne at his best could beat player after player racing through the congested centre.
And then there were the goals. He has scored the most for City from outside the box in Premier League history (sixth, on 30, in the all-time rankings, with Frank Lampard first on 41). Nobody hits the ball truer, and he does so with such a perfect follow-through that you expect his boot to also end up in the back of the net.So many of his 108 goals are classics. There’s De Bruyne the technician, firing home myriad arrows and top-spun dippers (too numerous to mention); De Bruyne the acrobat,with his super-human hooked volleyagainst Newcastle in 2015; De Bruyne the wit,rolling a daisy-cutter free-kickunderneath the jumping Cardiff defenders in 2018 with a cruel wink (changing the game for ever, as some poor sod always had to lie behind the wall after that to prevent it happening again); and De Bruyne the physicist, determined to defy the laws of geometry,with a diving header into the top corneragainst Brighton.
And he doesn’t even particularly like scoring. His big thing is assists (119 in the Premier League alone). He is streets ahead of any other player in assists per minute in the Premier League with one every 177 minutes followed by Dennis Bergkamp with one every 236. Perhaps the assist we became most familiar with was the back-spun swerving rocket-cross into the area that evaded every defender, leaving a grateful forward to tap it in at the far post. Sure the opposition knew what was coming, but it made no difference. Then there was the speed of thought – the sublime single touch between the lines, invisible to all others (except David Silva), that could take out half a dozen players.
When De Bruyne came to City he couldn’t tackle. But how he learned. And, of course, he did it in his own way. My favourite De Bruyne move was when with one touch he blocked a forward, took the ball cleanly (think Bobby Moore against Pelé) and started an attack. One of these block-tackle-charges against Stoke ended with a defence-splitting pass so precise it should have required aprotractor and the inevitable far-post tap-in, by Leroy Sané.
His City history runs in parallel with Pep Guardiola’s, having signed six months before the gaffer. So, after a decade at City, he leaves with 16 trophies including six Premier League titles, two FA Cups, five League Cups, a Champions League and a Fifa Club World Cup. In his time at the club, they have become the only team to gain 100 points in a season, win the Premier League four times in a row and make a clean sweep of domestic trophies in a single season (the quadruple in 2019). In 2020, De Bruyne became the first City men’s player to win the PFA Player of the Year award, and won it again the following season.
My friend BriceyG and I have got nicknames for all City players. De Bruyne is Pinky for obvious reasons. On the pitch his cheeks turn pink with pleasure, effort, passion, and anger. He doesn’t often do anger, but when he does you don’t want to be sharing that pitch with him. There is a famous clip of him losing it with teammates at the end of a Champions League match against Napoli in 2017 when he wants to confront the referee. De Bruyne, at his pinkest,shouts “Let me talk” five times. Every time his voice gets louder and more high-pitched. You wait for the explosion, but it doesn’t come. In the end, he sees sense and walks away. De Bruyne has never been sent off playing for City.
What I first noticed about him when I interviewed him at his home is how he ghosts around the place, playing second fiddle to the family. It took me a while to realise he was actually in the kitchen with his wife Michèle , his mother-in law and a couple of agents. De Bruyne is an unusual mix of withdrawn and outspoken. There’s a famous story that as a teenager he was sent along with two other aspiring footballers to live with foster parents. After one season, the foster parents said they didn’t want him any more. He was too quiet and didn’t fit in with the family. It just made him more determined to succeed. He told his parents (his father painted trains, his mother was a housewife) back home in Drongen, Belgium, not to worry; he was going to make it.
Setbacks have always spurred him on. He spent six unhappy months at Chelsea at the age of 20 under the bruising tutelage of José Mourinho who started him in only three games before loaning him to Werder Bremen, where he showed what he was capable of. Within two years, he was Germany’s player of the season at Wolfsburg with 16 goals and 27 assists.
When City signed him for £55m, the former Liverpool defender Phil Thompson said: “The world is going mad. The amount of money they’re paying for this boy is just absolutely bonkers.” He wasn’t alone in thinking that. Another spur to succeed.
For all his reserve, when De Bruyne does talk he really talks. He speaks in a quiet monotone with a spearing honesty – an unlikely verbal assassin. At the age of 20, playing for Genk, he gave a savage assessment of his teammates in a half-time interview. “I’m ashamed of them. I suggest that those who don’t have a desire to play just leave,” he said.
We met in November 2022, just before the World Cup in Qatar. Again, there was no holding back. He said it didn’t feel like a real World Cup and that it was a distraction from the Premier League. When he was chatting to his agents, one asked if he thought Belgium could win the World Cup. “No chance, we’re too old,” he replied. Only seven months previously Belgium had been ranked the best team in the world.
Later on that day, when I interviewed him, I asked the same question, wondering whether he’d play the diplomat. The answer was a tad more tactful, but not much. “I think our chance was 2018. We have a good team, but it is ageing. We lost some key players. We have some good new players coming, but they are not at the level other players were in 2018. I see us more as outsiders.” He didn’t think he was saying anything controversial; he was just answering a straight question with a straight answer. But that’s not how the world saw it. His Belgian teammates took offence and it caused a mighty rumpus in the camp. After Belgium were eliminated in the first stage, defender Jan Vertonghen sarcastically quipped: “Where did it go wrong? We probably also attack badly because we are too old, that must be it now, surely?
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As for money, he’s been equally forthright. He told me he was worth every penny of his estimated £385,000 a week because he’s a top-class entertainer bringing great success and huge income to the club. De Bruyne had negotiated his own salary after dumping his long-term agent, Patrick De Koster, who had been arrested on suspicion of fraud. He approached the negotiation as scientifically as his football, bringing along his key performance indicators to prove his value.
Although he insisted he wasn’t overpaid, he knew the money and accompanying lifestyle was potentially dangerous for his children. He said that he and Michèle could cope with their privilege because they’d experienced a regular lower-middle-class life when they were growing up. His fear was that the kids would become spoiled because they had experienced nothing else.
But they seemed lovely. And the longer I spent with the family, the more I could see why he wanted me to meet them. This was the heart of his life; what meant most to him – Suri, the cute baby with the Erling Haaland haircut, six-year-old Mason interviewed me with my recorder (“What’s it like working for media? What’s your favourite colour?”) and three-year-old Rome was building a racetrack on his mini-computer. At the time none of them cared much for football, which made them even more likeable.
My younger daughter Maya, who’s been a City fan her whole life, accompanied me to De Bruyne’s house. She told me it was too good an opportunity to miss, and she was sure Kevin wouldn’t mind. She was right. After a few hours, I felt that if he’d spotted us strolling in the garden the following day he wouldn’t have cared, so long as we were still talking to the family and getting to know them.
I explained our match-day routine to him. Maya and I like to get into the ground about 50 minutes before the match for two reasons. First, to watch the players warm up; second to collect waves. There’s no better way of gauging the technical ability of footballers than watching them in the warm-up, particularly when they’re doing shooting practice. You’d be surprised how many top-quality players never hit the target (but we still love you Jack). Pinky De Bruyne has always been in a different class – that killer combination of power and fizzing accuracy in shooting practice was worth the entrance fee alone (Only Lionel Messi has given me such pre-match pleasure with his volleyed 50-yard passes.)
And then there are the waves. One day Maya and I want to write a children’s book called The Girl Who Collected Waves, but in the meantime we’ll just continue collecting them. Collecting waves is a simple game that requires a loud voice and lack of pride. We go right to the front when the players come out to warm up (usually behind the away goal) and scream at them in the empty ground for a wave. (“Erling!Erling!ERLING!!!Give us a wave!”)
Over the years, we’ve had some great wavers – Sergio Agüero waved with the sweetest of smiles, Ilkay Gündogan’s wave exuded kindness, Willy Caballero once waved at us at Chelsea when we were in the top tier (it was a particularly quiet night), and reserve-reserve keeper Scott Carson never lets us down. But Pinky has never so much as raised a finger in acknowledgment. For a long time, we thought it was because he was aloof. But then we realised it was something else. He was so focused that he couldn’t see the fans, even in an empty ground. It made us admire him all the more.
We told him about the waves. He smiled, and promised we’d never get one no matter how loud or long we shouted because he was in the zone. He’s been as good as his word. For two seasons since we met him, we’ve howled for waves and never had so much as a glance.
Fame can make people a pain in the arse. It’s amazing how many D-listers assume you want a selfie with them. De Bruyne is the opposite. At times he resents his fame, for his family’s sake. And at times it seems to embarrass him. My lasting memory of him at his house is disappearing and returning, looking little-boy shy. He had a City shirt in his hand – No 17, De Bruyne, the top he had worn in the previous match. He handed it over to Maya, pink with embarrassment, and said: “I thought you might like this,” as if it was the last thing on earth she’d want. It made her year; possibly her decade.
And now it’s time for our farewells. City fans have been spoilt for greats in recent years – the metronomic Rodri, heroic hardman Vincent Kompany; midfieldubermenschYaya Touré, goalkeeping libero Ederson, strikers extraordinaire Agüero and Haaland, andthe diminutive magician David Silva. But perhaps De Bruyne leaves as the greatest of them all.
As for me, I’m still in denial. So maybe, just maybe, he’ll stay as the greatest of them all.