De Bruyne set to show Chelsea what they’re missing

By on April 15, 2016

Kevin De Bruyne is a car enthusiast.  In April 2014, he sat down for an interview with Bundesliga’s official YouTube channel at a Volkswagen showroom in Wolfsburg and browsed the history of the German company’s cars.  And although he likes to take it easy on the road, his footballing career is in the fast lane towards the top of the world game.

At Wolfsburg, De Bruyne’s appetite for cars was always satisfied given the fact that Volkswagen own the club.  Yet the German car company has more to do with De Bruyne’s recent rise at Manchester City than you might think.

In German football, they have the 50+1 rule, which prevents external investors from owning more than 50% of a German football club.  The rule is meant to prevent the influence of foreign investors that are increasingly commonplace in European football, but in more recent years has placed smaller German clubs at a disadvantage in Europe.

Wolfsburg are a notable exception, the football team having grown out of a multi-sports club for local workers at Volkswagen.  The car manufacturer has given the club the financial backing to fund their recent rise and sign De Bruyne in 2014 from Chelsea for £18 million, at the end of a drawn-out transfer saga.

The Belgian midfielder was in a rough spot in his career at the time.  That summer, Jose Mourinho had convinced him to stay at Chelsea after Jurgen Klopp had attempted to entice the midfielder to Borussia Dortmund, per an interview with Sam Wallace of the Telegraph.  Although Mourinho promised the young star playing opportunities, which had been in short supply since De Bruyne joined the club from Belgian side Genk in 2012, the arrivals of Willian and Andre Schurrle all but pushed him out of Mourinho’s plans.

De Bruyne was gone six months later having played for Chelsea only nine times in his three years at the club.  He isn’t bitter, though, and says the experience made him stronger.  He had a successful loan spell at Werder Bremen in the 2012/2013 season, making thirty-three appearances and scoring ten goals, and Wolfsburg was the perfect place for De Bruyne to revitalize his young career.

With fifty-one appearances and thirteen goals in two years at Wolfsburg, although he has almost always had more assists than goals, and was unanimously voted Bundesliga player of the year by media and players alike in the 2014/2015 season.  That one year bumped his price tag up to £55 million, which Manchester City shelled out for the Belgian international’s services.

Already, he is more at home in Manchester than he ever was at Chelsea and his girlfriend Michele Lacroix recently delivered his first child.

After recovering from a long-term knee injury, he has been a revelation at City and has six league goals and nine assists for the Sky Blues so far this season.  On Tuesday, he curled home a lovely game-winner in City’s Champions League Quarterfinal victory over Paris Saint-Germain to send his team into the Champions League semifinals.

This weekend, he returns to Stamford Bridge to face Guus Hiddink’s struggling Chelsea side and show his old team just how far he has come in a few short years.

Homepage photo credit: Samsung Belgium (Flickr: Kevin Debruyne) [CC BY 2.0], via Wikimedia Commons

About Alex Morgan

Alex Morgan, founder of Football Every Day, lives and breaths football from the West Coast of the United States in California. Aside from founding Football Every Day in January of 2013, Alex has also launched his own journalism career and hopes to help others do the same with FBED. He covers the San Jose Earthquakes as a beat reporter for QuakesTalk.com and his work has also been featured in the BBC's Match of the Day Magazine.