Unlike many of the top footballers around the world, Kevin De Bruyne is what many would call a quiet person.
He rarely gives bold interviews, isn’t the most active on social media and certainly isn’t one for crazy haircuts or see-through expensive backpacks.
The Manchester City star mostly does his talking on the pitch, and when he does, it screams talent at you like a mother chastising her child for trying to get under the sink cabinet where all the cleaning products are stored.
That’s because he loves football, so much so that, according to his father, ‘when he was born, the only thing he wanted to do was hit things with his feet’.
Herwig De Bruyne, speaking to So Foot as part of a huge exposé on the Belgium international, continues by adding: “When he was 10 months old, he didn’t want to do anything else. Just hit things with his feet. It was in him”.
Nothing about the Manchester City star suggests he’s an overly awkward person, but one of his teammates when he was at Genk, David Hubert, told the French magazine what he was like back then.
He said: “Maybe there are things he isn’t able to say and the pitch is his way of communicating them. It’s a bit like Mozart who, through his compositions, displayed his emotions”.
However, few who played or coached him at a young age believed he would get this good, as explained by Michel Ribeiro, one of his teachers at Genk.
He explained: “If someone tells you today that they predicted he’d be one of the top four footballers in the world, he’s a liar. We thought he could become a professional, yes, but to go as far as becoming such a monster… No one could predict it”.
It was his decision to leave Gent for Genk at the age of 14, which didn’t go down well with his parents, and he chose them over Anderlecht.
Ribeiro added: “When someone of that age decides to go across the country and leave his family, you know you’ve got a player with huge strength of character”.
That also came across on the pitch, where he was never shy of telling his teammates what to do or when he wasn’t happy with them.
Franky Vercauteren, who used to be the Belgium national team manager, added: “Opinions were divided on Kevin. Everyone was in agreement on his talent, but they told me about his special character, not always easy to handle… Some featured it would be a problem in his career.
“In the end, I understand it was a strength: Kevin knows what he wants. He’s full of emotions and doesn’t hesitate to show his frustrations. He can lose it because his team conceded during training when you’ve forgotten to blow for a foul. He’s a competitor. That’s the key”.
This desire to win is what allowed him to exert his revenge on Chelsea, who never got to fully benefit from their initial investment on the pitch, only doing so in their bank account when Wolfsburg agreed to pay £20m for the midfielder in January 2014.
One and a half years later, Manchester City open up their chequebook for £68.4m to bring him back to England, where the rest is history, especially once Pep Guardiola took over from Manuel Pellegrini.
The Spaniard, placing the Belgian at the heart of his plans, has helped De Bruyne become, for former Belgium national team manager Marc Wilmots, ‘probably the best team player of all time’.
He continued: “Kevin is a sniper. In a team that dominates, he becomes even more precious when he drops back a bit. It makes him even more deadly, especially when you understands he has a huge engine. Often, you think he’s dead, but that’s never the case. He’s just red.
“With Guardiola, he managed to create a new type of midfielder. Honestly, who else is capable to destroy a block of players from anywhere on the pitch with his speed of execution? There isn’t anyone, and he’s only at the beginning of his best years”.
At 29 years of age, who knows when he’ll stop, but, much like Zlatan Ibrahimović, you can rest assured he’ll go until the very end.
That’s what his dad thinks, anyways.
He ends the article by saying: “If Kevin can play football until he’s 40, he will. For him, it isn’t a job. He plays at Manchester City like he did in our garden in Drongen. Against Barcelona or in the garden, it’s the same to him”.
