Champions League: Kevin de Bruyne, the man in the middle
Manchester City midfielder Kevin De Bruyne.
Adam Davy POOL / AFP
Text by: Farid Achache Follow
4 min
Paris Saint-Germain receives Manchester City at Parc des Princes on Wednesday April 28 for the semi-final first leg of the Champions League.
The Parisians will have to make sure not to let the Belgian Kevin de Bruyne lead the Citizens' game wonderfully.
The English club and de Bruyne had eliminated PSG in the quarter-finals, in 2015-2016.
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It was perhaps not a player can win a game alone, like Messi, Ronaldo, Neymar or Mbappé,
ensures the Manchester City coach
,
Pep Guardiola the micro Canal +
.
But the average level of my players is so high that no replacement unbalances the team.
When I am asked to talk about the players, their qualities, I always answer the same thing: you just have to look.
Turn on your TV and enjoy.
Kevin… It's like a knife
.
When he decides to go, he sees the passes and the game.
“Paris is warned, the Belgian international is back.
The praises of Marc Wilmots and Eden Hazard
On Friday 23 April, the Manchester City star midfielder participated in collective training.
Good news for the English club before this semi-final first leg of the Champions League against Paris SG.
Injured in the ankle a week ago, during the defeat of Manchester City against Chelsea in the semi-final of the FA Cup (1-0), the Belgian midfielder was present in the starting lineup for the final of the League Cup (League Cup
)
against Tottenham Sunday, April 25.
And with him, Manchester City won 1-0 to win the title.
“
The Coupe de la Ligue is good, but we also have an eye on PSG,
” Guardiola conceded before this victory.
“
With Guardiola, Kevin de Bruyne succeeds in creating a new style of midfield.
Honestly, who other player than him is capable of blasting a block from any position with his speed of execution?
There is none and for me, it is only at the beginning of its best years
”, told the magazine
So Foot
Marc Wilmots
last year
, coach of the Belgian national team between 2012 and 2016, about the pillar of the midfield of the Citizens, described by his Belgian teammate Eden Hazard as a "
leader in the field, by his position
".
King of assists in England
Last season, “KDB” equaled the Premier League assists record held by Frenchman Thierry Henry (20) and scored 13 goals. This earned him the title of best player of the season in the English Championship. A rare thing on a European scale, the Belgian international had already set a record in the Bundesliga a few years earlier. During the 2014-2015 season with Wolfsburg, he equaled the Bosnian Zvjezdan Misimović with twenty assists and finished best European passer.
Even if Manchester City had been eliminated in the quarter-finals of the previous C1 by Lyon, the former Chelsea player had nevertheless splashed the competition of his class.
What had earned him the title of best midfielder.
The Red Devil was ahead of Thomas Müller (Bayern Munich) and Thiago Alcántara (Bayern then Liverpool), two winners of the event.
Five years have passed since the last confrontation between Manchester City and Paris Saint-Germain, in the quarterfinals of the 2015-2016 edition.
At the time, the duel had turned to the advantage of the Citizens, catchy on the way to the Parc des Princes (2-2), and hardly worried on the return (1-0).
Kevin de Bruyne, then the author of two of his team's three goals, including an unstoppable long shot in the return match, synonymous with the first C1 semi-final in City's history, was there ...
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