When a legend of his caliber leaves a club, the words are weighed, each comma analyzed. His farewell message can be a balm or a poison.
He could have settled his accounts. After a decade of exceptional services, a player from the caliber of Kevin de Bruyne would have been entitled to leave with bitterness. His first press conference in Naples was expected for that. Was he going to scratch his former club? Send a spade to its former leaders? The answer fell. And it is much more subtle, much more “human” than a simple settling of accounts.
No resentment, nor a wooden language for de Bruyne
The Belgian set foot in the dish, with this slightly raw honesty that characterizes him. The reason for his departure?
Manchester City simply did not offer him a contract extension. The club made a choice. Cold. Almost clinical. But de Bruyne is not the type to play the victims. Instead of anger, he offered loyalty.
“I am a Man City player for life”he said, before adding : “Given the way it ended, I thought it was time to find a new challenge. »» No bitterness, just the lucid observation of a page that turns. That's the strong message. A good goodbye.
So it's not a leak, but a quest. That of a new challenge, a new culture. The idea of discovering Italy, rubbing shoulders with a new championship and working with Antonio Conte excited it. And then there is the human aspect. Finding his lifelong friend, Romelu Lukaku, weighed in the scale. “I have known Romelu since we were 13 years old”, he said. Have a familiar face, a translator, a guide. This is what makes a project concrete.
“City for life”: Bruyne's full class declaration after being pushed outside
A challenge to its measure?
This departure asks an inevitable question. Is City right to let his master playing 34 years old? The club has bet on the future, on a necessary renewal. It is the law of very high level football, a machine that cannot afford sentimentalism. We know the song. But do we have the right to bury a player from this caliber? Naples, reigning Italian champion, does not think so.
The Belgian does not look back. He arrives in Italy to learn, to grow up again, to help a team already at the top to remain so. His message to Manchester City was a farewell without bitterness, but tinged with a form of realism. That of these players who know that in football, the most beautiful love stories end up. Always. And that the best way to honor them is to start a new one with the same passion.
