It was announced on Friday that Kevin De Bruyne will leave Manchester City at the end of the season and, within an hour, Pep Guardiola had added to calls for him to get a statue outside the Etihad Stadium.
“Listen, I don’t know, but I will bet a lot of money that it is going to happen,” he said at his press conference. “I don’t know, but of course, come on, he deserves to be in this level.”
For City fans, De Bruyne will always be in the conversation when it comes to the club’s best ever player, alongside Colin Bell and David Silva, but it will be interesting to see whether he gets that kind of recognition when it comes to a wider Premier League debate.
Maybe because today’s most prominent pundits — let’s call them The Overlap generation — played in that era, and because the most prominent football writers and commentators were either starting their careers or growing up during it, but the ‘Barclays’ Premier League greats have been set in stone, meaning anybody since then has come up against something of a glass ceiling.
Thierry Henry, Wayne Rooney, Steven Gerrard, Frank Lampard, jumpers for goalposts, marvellous! Those names have been established as the league’s very own golden generation. How can we possibly consider De Bruyne’s place at the top table when we still cannot agree whether Gerrard or Lampard were better?
De Bruyne is one of the few from the new generation worthy of a place among the greats (Darren Walsh/Chelsea FC via Getty Images)
But it is testament to just how good the Belgian has been that he will surely shake up the old order, not just amid this burst of nostalgia but once the dust settles and the game moves on. Mohamed Salah is probably the only other player from the modern era to be in with a shout, his wing play and sheer amount of goals making him an obviously appealing option.
It is those two that carry the torch for the newest generation of stars. The player of the season awards have often revolved around those two; they have been the stand-out players from the City vs Liverpool battles that never captured the public’s imagination in the same way as the old United v Arsenal wars, probably because of that same pining for the old days.
But De Bruyne should transcend that. He is one of very, very few modern Premier League players that will have us reminiscing about 2018, not 2008, and not in a streets-won’t-forget way. He was not Hatem Ben Arfa, Morten Gamst Pedersen or Adel Taarabt, capable of fleeting brilliance. He was the best player on the best team for the best part of a decade, with 19 trophies to his name.
“Everyone can make an action, two actions, assists, but during how many years and how many games?” Guardiola asked rhetorically on Friday. “That makes him unique.”
In terms of the ‘best ever’ criteria, he was not just stylistically appealing, with his lung-busting runs, eye of the needle passes and thumping finishes, but a proper numbersman, too.
He has contributed to 187 goals in his 10 seasons at City, the only dip coming in 2018-19 when he missed most of the season with different injuries.
Even then he came back stronger than ever, possibly putting in his best individual season; City had a drop-off in 2019-20, finishing 18 points behind Liverpool, but with Guardiola trying to shore everything up, he gave license to De Bruyne to be creative and he thrived.
That was the season he recorded 20 assists, equalling the record set by the irrepressible Henry. A couple of players had looked set to match that over the years, with Cesc Fabregas and Mesut Ozil on course at one point, but they somehow never managed, adding to the mystique of Henry’s achievement. And yet De Bruyne should have probably beaten it; the fact he was not credited with a 21st against Arsenal memorably annoyed him, and almost certainly does to this day.
“They took one away against Arsenal,” he said in an interview a couple of years ago. “They took one away and then when they celebrated my 100th assist, they put it as the first clip in the video. Can you imagine that, how wrong they were?!”
He had driven to the byline and crossed expertly with his left foot for Gabriel Jesus, but due to a very minor deflection off Calum Chambers it was not officially credited to him. That was the game when he also scored twice in that first half — he blasted the first into the roof of the net and placed the second into the bottom corner, again with his left foot. He also rattled the post from the edge of the area which would have capped one of the most incredible Premier League hat-tricks ever.
It is remarkable how many of his most memorable contributions came via that left foot. He scored the goal that possibly kickstarted this whole new era of success, firing in at Stamford Bridge to see off Chelsea, the defending champions, in 2017. The City players sang his name in the dressing room that day and it felt, even then, that that victory might have been the start of something special.
A couple of months later he absolutely battered one into the top corner at Leicester and then against Tottenham another month on, after Dele Alli stamped on his ankle but only got booked, he rampaged into the Spurs box and thrashed the ball past Hugo Lloris in sheer anger. He celebrated by holding up a two and a one on his fingers: Silva, their No 21, had to miss the game because his child was born prematurely at just 25 weeks. That son, Matteo, is seven years old now — the world has kept turning and De Bruyne has kept producing.
De Bruyne has played with generations of City stars (Dean Mouhtaropoulos/Getty Images)
During the 2021-22 run-in, City went to Wolves with only three games to go, a week after the ultimate Champions League heartache at Real Madrid, knowing that they simply needed to win if they were to clinch the title. De Bruyne scored three goals in the first 24 minutes, all with his left foot. Then he added a fourth, with his right, in the second half. He scored 15 league goals that season, including a winner against Chelsea, one home and away against Liverpool, and two against Manchester United. In Europe he scored the only goal of the tie against Atletico Madrid, and inside two minutes against Real.
He was the man for the big nights, particularly at the Etihad. In the treble season he scored two goals in the de facto title decider against Arsenal, as well as one at the Emirates a couple of months earlier. He struck against Liverpool as the march to glory gathered pace, as well as a stunning drive against Madrid at the Bernabeu, the scene of the previous year’s heartache.
And this is a player most known for his assists. For a cross-field through ball to Leroy Sane in a 7-2 victory against Stoke City, for the countless back-post crosses for Raheem Sterling and Sergio Aguero to get on the end of, for the endless through balls to Erling Haaland. Look at these names: he has been there for all of it.
And all of it has taken its toll. After the FA Cup final over Manchester United in 2023 he knew his hamstring was on the verge of giving out, having played through the problem for months, but he ploughed on anyway because the Champions League final was just a week away.
The hamstring went early in Istanbul, and then again, far more seriously, a couple of months later. That led to surgery which, coupled with a hernia earlier this season, has seemingly robbed him of his best attributes; the effort is there, but the quality has not been, and in truth it has been sad to watch at times.
Nothing can take away from De Bruyne’s legacy at this point, though, and he even has a chance to add to it: how special would it be for him, and possibly some other City legends, to bow out this season by winning the FA Cup?
That really would be a fitting finale for one of English football’s greats, and it might even help him smash through that glass ceiling.
(Top photo: Michael Regan – UEFA/UEFA via Getty Images)