Manchester City face losing Kevin De Bruyne for a significant spell in the early part of the season after the midfielder suffered a knee injury in training yesterday morning.
The Belgian was immediately sent for tests on suspected ligament damage to his right knee. City would not confirm the extent of the injury or speculate on how long he could be out for, saying only that the player had been withdrawn from training and was due to undergo further tests today. A report said he had suffered knee ligament damage similar to the injury he sustained in a league game with Everton in January 2016 and which kept him out of the team for two months.
“We do not know the severity of the situation yet, and until all the examinations are complete we cannot comment,” a spokesman said. De Bruyne started the first game of the season at Arsenal on the bench, coming on only as a late substitute to allow as much rest as possible after competing in the later stages of the World Cup. Even though Pep Guardiola has more squad depth than most, the midfielder’s creative input was missed, which is probably why he was sent on for the last half hour.
City have players who can do a similar job, most notably David Silva and Ilkay Gündogan, though De Bruyne is the player who brings the best out of his teammates and an absence of more than a few weeks would adversely affect their title defence. So influential was De Bruyne in last season’s title campaign that he would most likely have been voted player of the season but for Mo Salah’s remarkable run of goals and performances that helped carry Liverpool into the Champions League final.
With the transfer window already closed, losing their most gifted and versatile attacking performer for any length of time would be a major blow to Guardiola and his team, though even if it were still possible to bring in a replacement City would have struggled to identify a player of the requisite quality.
Earlier, de Bruyne had claimed City don’t need to win the Champions League to be judged a success. European club football’s most prestigious trophy has proved elusive to City despite the hundreds of millions invested in players since Abu Dhabi United Group bought the club in 2008 with a semi-final appearance in the 2015/16 season under Manuel Pellegrini their best showing.
However, de Bruyne — whose Champions League hopes were dashed by Premier League rivals Liverpool last season — told the BBC winning the league crown last season probably ranks as a greater achievement than if one were to win the Champions League.
“I don’t agree that we have to win the Champions League to be a success,” said De Bruyne, who has been with City since 2015. “It is a big title to win but in the Champions League you don’t need to have the consistency that you need in the league. We were great for the whole year, maybe a bit less against Liverpool, and so we were out.”
De Bruyne speaks with even more recent painful experience of disappointment at a major tournament with Belgium beaten by eventual champions France in the World Cup semi-finals. “It is a tournament, you need to be good at the right time,” he said. “In the league if you have a bad spell then you are running behind. “It is a different prospect, cup games are different to a league.”
De Bruyne, who scored a stunning goal in Belgium’s 2-1 World Cup quarter-final win over Brazil, says he enjoys a professional relationship with City manager Pep Guardiola.
Guardiola is filmed in the eight part documentary series ‘All or Nothing’ made by Amazon covering City last season — which is to be aired on the streaming service Amazon Prime tomorrow — telling the players if they felt they would play better by hating him then they should do so.
“Pep has different relationships with everyone,” De Bruyne said. “I am lucky that I like to play the way already that he implemented so it was an easier transition, more natural.”
De Bruyne, who unlike his former Genk teammate Thibaut Courtois did not enjoy a successful time when he joined Chelsea in 2012 and was eventually sold to German outfit VfL Wolfsburg in 2014, concedes levity can be in short supply in Guardiola’s pep talks.
“Pep can be intense,” said the 27-year-old who scored eight goals and provided 16 assists in City’s title win which yielded several records including passing 100 points, “In the end sometimes it can be an overload (of information from him) but every person in life has that when they are at work. We cope with it fine. You don’t have to shout at him, you talk like an adult, you are both people who came here to win as a team. If you explain what you are thinking then there is no problem."