The obsession manifested itself long before he was allowed to join a football club. It’s hard to say exactly where and when it started, but it must have been with Grandpa on the couch in London, watching a football programme. Match of the Day on the BBC. His father goes even further, thinks it is something innate. Because it was always just football, football, football.
Kevin de Bruyne (30), recently named the best player in the Premier League for the second time and according to many the world’s best midfielder at the moment, only wanted one thing for his fourth birthday; a videotape with training footage of Michael Owen, the Liverpool striker and England national team at the time. That cassette is turned grey, the only one in the De Bruyne house that was worn out. Little Kevin watched it carefully, then grabbed his ball and mimicked everything Owen did in the yard. He was not interested in other toys, his father says. Yes, the Gameboy, for in the car. Thereupon, of course, he played “a football game.”
Herwig De Bruyne (58) – same blue glance, same reserved smile – is not for the first and probably not for the last time reminiscing about the younger years of his famous son. It is Monday afternoon and the canteen of football club KVE Drongen, near Ghent, is unusually busy. Volunteers everywhere are busy restoring the sports park to its original state, after 14,000 people came last weekend to the fifth edition of the KDB Cup, an international youth tournament named after Drongen’s pride.
Famous Flemish
Kevin De Bruyne showed up unannounced on Friday, but a message on social media caused the entire village to turn up in no time. He played matches with famous Flemish people and briefly participated with a G-team. The goalkeeper who received his autographed football boots went crazy. A day later, thousands of children stood in long queues in the morning to have their picture taken with their idol, right where it all started for him.
His father vividly remembers the first tournament that Kevin played as a ‘little devil’, barely six years old. He played in two teams because they were missing a boy somewhere. “He had new football boots, so those heels were completely open. But Kevin didn’t hear you whining. Play on, play on! All day. He would become a professional football player, he had that image in his head. And it happened.”
Jan Van Troos, former chief scout at AA Gent, was tipped off by a friend that year. “There is a white head walking around in Drongen, you should go and have a look there,” says Van Troos on the phone. “It was a dredging field they played on. Difficult to play football on. But Kevin’s passes arrived, also over 20 meters. At that age, everyone runs towards the ball at the same time. Not Kevin. After two minutes I had seen enough.”
It would take another year and a half before Herwig let his son make the switch to the youth of AA Gent. That is where his unprecedented focus fell, and his deep dislike of losing. Van Troos: “When they lost, he sometimes just stayed in the center circle.”
Host family in Genk
When he was fourteen, De Bruyne himself indicated that he wanted to play football at KRC Genk. There he had seen opportunities to get better. It meant he left the parental home overnight and went to live 150 kilometers away with a host family, never to return. “I’ve always felt like an only child because of that,” says his sister Stephanie, three years her junior. “We have never developed a very close bond. It was also always about Kevin in our family. Sometimes you feel less. But nowadays we can have a good laugh with each other.”
You can stand on his toes twice, but then he pushes you aside
Herwig De Bruyne father
The first year it did not go smoothly in Genk. In the host family they were not informed by Kevin. People who know him well describe him as introverted, direct. If he doesn’t like something, he will say it. Conversely, he also likes people to be clear against him. That’s exactly what Genk lacked, says his father. Kevin often sat in his room doing homework, and was otherwise found on the football field. He spoke little. Herwig: “He didn’t want to be a burden to anyone. But that family didn’t talk to him either.” When he was told after a year that the family had registered him at a boarding school, De Bruyne was severely beaten.
“Kevin has become suspicious of it,” says his father. “Because he’s not always sure what people think about him. For example, his group of friends does not expand. He has five or six close friends. That’s where it ends. He was, at the beginning of his career, sometimes lonely.”
Debut at seventeen
When De Bruyne was no longer welcome with the host family and moved in with someone else, he said aloud that he would show what he was worth. Two months later, he had earned a professional contract with Genk. He made his debut in the first team at 17, and then played successively for Chelsea, Werder Bremen, VfL Wolfsburg and since 2015 with Manchester City.
On his transfer to Wolfsburg in 2014, his agent Patrick De Koster earned 9 million euros in commissions. Five years later, De Bruyne took the man he once described as a “second father” to court on suspicion of forgery and money laundering. Because the investigation is still not completed, father Herwig does not want to comment on the case. “Kevin can be very firm,” he says. “You can step on his toes twice, but then he pushes you aside. And he now knows: you don’t really need an agent in football.”
De Bruyne therefore did the negotiations prior to his contract extension at City last year. He was legally assisted by two lawyers and his father also helped him. He requested all kinds of analyzes from top clubs because he wanted to see where he had the best chance of winning trophies in the coming years. He could stay with City or go to Bayern Munich. In the end, he saw the greatest chance of winning the Champions League at his current club. That title is still missing from his record. This season, De Bruyne stranded with City in the semi-final against Real Madrid. The first game (4-3 win in Manchester) was one of the most captivating European matches in years.
Under coach Pep Guardiola, Kevin De Bruyne has grown into the compelling playmaker he is today. “I’ve asked Pep why it always seems like Kevin has a second more time in the game than the rest,” says Herwig. “That’s because he thinks and acts faster. If you pay attention to his eyes, you can see that even without the ball he constantly looks where his teammates are walking, where he needs to be. If something happens, he is already working on the next step.”
His father also sees a different person on the field, a more complete footballer even, since his son became a father himself (of three children). “If he had lost before, it would eat at him. But when he comes home now, there’s no room for that. It puts things into perspective. His children have provided a kind of inner peace. And he radiates that on the field as well.”
But it has been a long season for De Bruyne. After returning from an ankle injury sustained at the European Championships where he finished third with the Red Devils last year, he played virtually all Premier League games and won the championship for the fourth time with Manchester City on the final day of play. Now it is empty.
Last Saturday he appeared visibly tired in front of the cameras, at his own KDB Cup in Drongen. When asked about his expectations for the four glorified exhibition games he has to play in the Nations League in the coming weeks, starting with the one against the Dutch national team on Friday evening, he shrugged. “For me, the Nations League is unimportant,” he said bluntly. But his father knows: “Once he’s on the field, he wants to win too.”
A version of this article also appeared in the newspaper of June 3, 2022