It’s easy to divide opinion when you’re asked to pick a team’s player of the year, but Manchester City’s is Kevin De Bruyne and it’s very hard to think of anybody else who would come close.
Sergio Aguero would be the other candidate. Given that the vast majority of City’s players have struggled to replicate their performance levels between 2017 and 2019, Aguero’s consistency is all the more impressive.
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City have always known that he will be there to score the goals for them, whether it was 2012 as he helped secure their first title, 2014 when he seemed to be carrying the team on his shoulders, or 2019 when he fully bought into Pep Guardiola’s ideas.
This season, Aguero has scored 23 goals in 30 appearances, despite many of the players that usually supply him either struggling with their own form, or being absent altogether, whether that be Raheem Sterling, Bernardo Silva, David Silva or Leroy Sane.
So the Argentinian’s sheer reliability cannot be overlooked, especially in this most unpredictable of City seasons.
But De Bruyne has to be the winner, because who knows where City would be without him? Especially as De Bruyne has assisted Aguero six times, the most profitable supply line in the Premier League, ahead of Adama Traore to Raul Jimenez for Wolverhampton Wanderers.
Of course, City’s problems are relative — they are second in the table, they’ve won the Carabao Cup for a third season running and they are going well in the other competitions — but that near certainty you had that City could win any game has eroded over the course of the season.
When they lost to Norwich and Wolves, the two defeats that did early damage to their title challenge, De Bruyne didn’t start either game. He also didn’t feature at Old Trafford when City lost a Manchester derby to United there shortly before the season was put on hold.
But too often City have relied on him to make the difference, to paper over cracks.
Their success has been built on a perfectly functioning system, with everybody playing their part (which is why they could cope without De Bruyne for much of last season) but so often in 2019-20 he has looked like he has been winning points on his own.
Just think about those assists. Recently we ran through his top 10 from throughout his City career, but a top 10 from six months of this season would be competitive enough.
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The beauty of them all, and of so much of what De Bruyne does on the pitch, is that you can do nothing but watch and marvel. That includes if you’re playing for the other team.
How does he keep putting in these crosses that allow his team-mates to just tap the ball in from a few yards? If anything, he’s getting harder to stop.
Think about the two against Tottenham Hotspur at the start of the season, the one against Watford after 51 seconds when he drifted forward from right-back, the one against Leicester City in December when he stormed past Caglar Soyuncu like an ignored hitchhiker.
Or the one against Aston Villa in January, when he burst forward from the halfway line and picked out Gabriel Jesus at full pelt, or the one at Sheffield United that evaded everybody else but found Aguero three yards out.
Across the whole league, no player has directly contributed to more goals than he has; eight goals and 16 assists put him above Jamie Vardy (19 goals, four assists) and Mohamed Salah (16 goals, six assists).
But it’s about so much more than cold hard numbers. There is a magic about De Bruyne’s game that sets him apart from most footballers. They do it in different ways (and at different levels, it must be said) but there is a similarity to Lionel Messi in that De Bruyne has that little bit of unquantifiable brilliance that has to be seen to be fully appreciated.
In simple terms, he is a player you would pay money to watch. Without football at the moment, all we can do is look back at his best moments — and there are plenty from this season alone.
Think about that stunning 45 minutes against Arsenal, when he got two goals, an assist and would have had a first-half hat-trick but a fine save from Bernd Leno, who really should have let the ball go in for the greater good.
It was one of those games when De Bruyne trends on Twitter, the pundits in the Sky Sports studio look at each other stunned and say they’ve run out of words to describe him, when fans realise — again — how lucky they are to have him.
OK, so it was ‘only’ Arsenal. They were rudderless at that point, waiting to hire Mikel Arteta, the former City assistant who once explained De Bruyne’s evolution thus: “Previously he had the ability to accelerate the game. Now he’s got a choice of six gears and he’ll move smoothly through them at exactly the right time.”
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Probably the best example of that came at the Santiago Bernabeu, on a night when City may have finally, properly arrived on the European football scene. With 13 minutes to go and his team a goal down, he was being ushered away from danger by the Real Madrid defence, when he suddenly turned and spun 180 degrees, chipping up a delightful ball for Gabriel Jesus to head in.
A few moments later he was called upon to take a penalty, after weeks of seeing team-mates crack under the pressure from 12 yards. He had to wait seemed like an age, but tucked it away as nervelessly as everybody would have expected him to, which is why everybody had been calling for him to take City’s spot kicks for ages.
But when you’re at this level, who says all of your best work has to lead to goals? Can’t we just enjoy all the little moments too? Like this raking pass against Leicester that nearly took team-mate Ilkay Gundogan’s head off on its way to Riyad Mahrez.
Or this dink with the outside of his foot that really should have led to a goal (in reality, De Bruyne should have much more than the 16 league assists he’s got, and would be on 18 if Jesus had had his shooting boots on in that West Ham United game).
Or another through-ball with the outside of his foot in the home derby against United?
These are moments that send a ripple through the crowd, a tangible ‘Oooh!’
Combine that sense of wonder with a goal celebration and you know you’ve got a truly special player — like when he chested down a dropping ball, watched it bounce up and then battered it into the St James’ Park net via the bottom of the crossbar?
Scandalously, City let Newcastle United grab a draw via a late equaliser that November day, taking the shine off what would have been a goal fit to win any game.
In many ways, that has been the story of the reigning champions’ season, but nothing can take away from the fact that De Bruyne has been City’s best player, and perhaps the best in the country.
(Photo: Victoria Haydn/Manchester City FC via Getty Images)
