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3 hours ago
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Kevin De Bruyne can’t run any more. Or not like he used to anyway.
That seems to be the verdict of his Manchester City manager, Pep Guardiola, who obliquely cited an absence of “physicality” in his explanation for leaving De Bruyne out of the lineup against Real Madrid in February.
One data point suggests that De Bruyne still covers ground as he did in his gut-busting prime, when he always seemed to be triggering City’s high press. The 11.6 kilometers per 90 minutes he ran in the Champions League this season stack up favorably against the 11.5 km/90 he posted in the 2019/20 Premier League season when he won the first of two PFA Player of the Year awards in a row. His top speed, though, tells another story. In 2022, he recorded the highest sprint speed in the Champions League since it had begun tracking it in 2016 at 39.1 km/h. This season, De Bruyne’s top speed in European competition was 32.25 km/h.
What’s more, he has been on the field for less than half of Manchester City’s total Premier League playing time this season – last season, it was just 35.7%. He’s missed 42 matches to hamstring injuries over those campaigns.
De Bruyne has not lost a step. He’s misplaced several of them. Yet he’s still capable of brilliance, as against Crystal Palace on 12 April, when he tallied a goal, an assist and three key passes.
De Bruyne himself may disagree with the reasons behind his exit, but his contract will nonetheless expire this summer when he turns 34, bookending a decade at City and one of the finest midfield careers in Premier League history. He is likely to come to Major League Soccer, where teams are already jostling for position to recruit him, evidently satisfied that he can still do MLS-level running.
If someone works out how to pay De Bruyne a figure palatable to him after earning a reported $25.5m (about£19.2m) a year at City, the Belgian will not only bring his generational passing and reading of the game. He will also come equipped with a charming refusal, or possible inability, to ever be diplomatic about anything.
Asked by the Guardian whether Belgium could win the 2022 World Cup ahead of the start of that tournament, De Bruyne was his unfiltered self: “No chance, we’re too old.”
Even more memorable was the initially innocuous social media footage of De Bruyne tasting some food with then-teammate Fabian Delph, who froze when prompted to chime in? “Say something, it’s a video!” De Bruyne hollered at Delph in the viral post.
“You idiot!” he added in the bit clipped from the video that was posted, a well-placed source inside Manchester City confirmed to the Guardian US – surely the most important scoop this august outlet will get all year.
This allergy to tact should deliver yet more funny moments when it collides with the many quirks of MLS. But a stateside signing for De Bruyne would also reignite a tiresome “retirement league” discourse – the perpetuation of the idea that the league is merely a place for over-the-hill stars looking for one last payday, and little more. This debate is not only very boring, but also a marker of an almost incurable immaturity as a soccer scene.
It also is not based in reality. Fixating on the older arrivals to MLS ignores the league’s consistent acquisitions of up-and-coming players from South- and Central America, who far outnumber the rare big name headed to one of the league’s coastal hotspots. These are also conversations that other established and respected leagues – which is what MLS must be viewed as by now, in its 30th season – simply aren’t having.
The English Premier League spent the 1990s as a haven for the Italian Serie A’s veterans. The fondly remembered Gianfranco Zola didn’t arrive at Chelsea until he was 30. Gianluca Vialli had arrived a few months earlier at 32. Paolo Di Canio, Fabrizio Ravenelli, Pierluigi Casiraghi – all in their late 20s. Nobody fretted about what it all meant.
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When Zlatan Ibrahimović and David Beckham went to the LA Galaxy, there was more Retirement League Discourse. Yet when Milan gladly took Zlatan back after his spell with the Galaxy – as they did with Beckham, twice! – Serie A didn’t tumble into an existential crisis. If the league fell in the eyes of some in those years, those acquisitions were not the reason why. Zlatan got 34 more league goals in Italy, then retired.
Today, some Serie A teams like Milan, which presently has six players signed directly from English clubs in its first-team squad, basically run a jobs program for not-quite-good-enough-for-the-Big-6 Premier Leaguers. Is this considered to be a problem? It is not.
Signing older players with big names doesn’t mean you’re desperately chasing clout for your otherwise irrelevant league. Sometimes they are just opportunities to improve teams with shrewd signings at (often) below-market prices. In the best cases, they can raise the level of entire teams. In Miami, Lionel Messi and his merry band of longtime friends are all clearly much nearer the end of their careers than their peaks, yet last season they combined to amass the largest regular season points haul in MLS history – and while Messi and Sergio Busquets are well paid at a combined guaranteed rate of almost $30m, Jordi Alba and Luis Suárez are sensibly priced at a mere $1.5m apiece.
Now that they no longer rely on the reputation of imported veterans to cast their credibility on MLS, its clubs have also grown savvier in avoiding the sorts of players intent on enjoying a leisurely lifestyle in favor of those whose competitiveness still rages. Of late, there have been a lot fewer club-hopping Lothar Matthäuses or lackadaisical Rafa Márquez type-veterans in MLS than those with the relentlessness of Robbie Keane or the ever-irritable Thierry Henry, pushed by a pressing urge to keep winning no matter who they played for.
Whoever lands De Bruyne, if anyone in MLS indeed does, will surely be improved by his presence, even if he isn’t as fast as he once was. And it will doubtless be delightful to behold, as the Belgian has been his whole career.
Let’s propose, then, that there is no larger referendum in these kinds of signings any more, and that they can just stand alone as injections of joy.
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Leander Schaerlaeckens is at work on a book about the United States men’s national soccer team, out in 2026. He teaches at Marist University.
