KEVIN DE BRUYNE | RETURN OF THE KING | Documentary

A major talking point in tonight's lineup is a first start since August for Kevin De Bruyne. Remember it was on the opening day against Burnley when his hamstring betrayed him. Got to give a mention to KDB, Pep spoke in the press conference about whether he would start, there was that question, the cliche all the time, new signing, but he will feel like that. He will do and also for Kevin, he'll have the wisdom now of missing six months and knowing into the fit and fire and Kevin De Bruyne are fresh for the last four and a half months of the season, so it's going to be quite scary for everyone. But Kevin De Bruyne, three to four months, how big a loss is that? Will Kevin De Bruyne ever be fit again? Kevin is so important, when he is to be back, he will be back. The king is back, that's what it is. So Kev, what have you been up to for the last five months? Been everywhere, don't I? When did you first feel that something maybe wasn't right last season with you? Buy-in away, that was the first time I actually felt something in my hamstring. Well, obviously we took a scan and we were like, OK, there's a little tear in there, but I didn't feel too bad when I say I can't play, so obviously if I felt I was able to perform at the level that I needed to perform, I wanted to be available. Kevin has had issues obviously at the back end of last year, but preceding that, so I mean it's like these things always are, it's a combined approach in terms of like obviously getting a diagnosis, a scan, understanding what we're dealing with and then coming up with a plan to allow him to do as much as possible. I don't think I actually train that much or I train by myself, depending on how I felt, we just managed in a way, didn't play a game, then I played two games. Kev's the one that's going out and training and playing, so certainly a lot of that was led because of Kev's approach and Kev's understanding of his own body in terms of what he can deal with and how he needs to manage to really get out there and perform to the level that he's capable of. I had a really good end to the season, so honestly I made the right decision and I helped the team be where they needed to be and I made the decision at that point and I go with the decision and we found a way to perform. There's a problem down there for Kevin De Bruyne and this is a big concern for Manchester City and Pep Guardiola. Obviously it's not nice to get injured in the final, obviously because it's the second time that it happened. There's a collision here involving Antonio Rudiger and Kevin De Bruyne, you can see the devastation on his face. That game had so much riding on it and I think so much emotion for everybody. You spend a lot of time with the players and of course whenever they hit a setback you feel that a little bit with them as well on a personal level. So initially it's always more concerned about the player than the occasion. In a way I was proud about what I accomplished in the last months with everything injury-wise and personal-wise, there was a lot of things happening. Here with Kevin, they had to do it without you tonight, didn't they? Yeah, it's been a hard two months for me. I've got a lot of issues with my hamstring and it's a shame because I felt really good in the first half an hour and I thought I was doing well but we won so that's it, now it's time to celebrate. People may be going to give me a stake for that final but what can I do? I did everything that I needed to do in two months and then maybe the week that I've actually felt the best in like seven, eight weeks, it pops and there's nothing I can do about it. We won everything and I think I played a big part into that. I'm just proud of what I did and the decision that I took. Welcome back. Welcome back, I've already been here two hours. Where have you been? You're late. Once we knew Kev was okay, then it's always about right, well, kind of you've won that, what's next now? We need to know leading into sort of pre-season and then August leading into the season, like we need Kev back and firing and that becomes the thought process then. The whole summer I'm trying to work hard and obviously you enjoy yourself but every day you're working to get ready back in the season and I wasn't mentally ready to do that and I was tired. We tried to support him through that period and you've got to find that balance of rest and recuperation versus training. The lads did so much and pushed so hard last season to achieve something that was incredible really that it takes a physical toll and it takes just an emotional and psychological toll. So we knew building into the tour, obviously it was just about understanding where he was really maximising that kind of initial recovery and he did everything as always that he was asked to do and very well and was again looking like he was in a really good place. I was in a good place, I was training really hard, everything was fine and it's not nice training by yourself but in a way there's nothing else you can do. It's the opening night of the new 2023-24 Premier League campaign. It's the champions of the championship against last season's triple winners, it's Burnley against Manchester City. I actually came back in a good way, I came back pretty fit. I've been training for three weeks, everything was fine, scans were fine, measurements, tests, everything was okay. 75 days since the last day of last season, we are ready to do it all again. Obviously I think I started the game pretty well, we scored pretty quick and I did good. Then obviously I did the movement and I popped my hamstring again. Kevin De Bruyne who has been nursing a hamstring problem through the summer, this is not what Manchester City fans wanted to see. Send attention straight to Kevin De Bruyne, he goes off injured in the first half. The thing is, Maka, it's very easy to be wise after the event. He knows his body and if he didn't feel ready he'd have said so, sure. There's talk about the fact that he could be out for a few months, there's talk about the fact that it could be the start of the decline for our sweet Belgian prince. I was very frustrated and I just wanted to go back inside, because obviously I worked so hard during the summer to get back in time. How is Kevin De Bruyne, limped off early in the game? Yeah, unfortunately he's injured again and that is a problem. In the same position, I think he said to me, now we lost him for a time so he has to reflect and talk with the doctors, the physios, what happened with him. Because he was feeling really good, he was playing really good in the first minutes, so unfortunately he's injured again. Some of these things are unavoidable. It's never one thing that you can point to and say that's the key, that's what caused an injury and I don't think it is that. Like I said, when you're pushing these things do happen they're always trying to come back quickly and that is the nature of elite sport. You do reflect and you do look at things and you want to do the best for the player and you don't want that to happen. I didn't feel like it was that bad. I felt the pop but I can walk and then obviously the day after I came in and I was like, I've got a problem here, I can't really walk and I've never had that. So when I got the verdict that I need surgery, it was obviously not nice to hear. Kevin De Bruyne being out for four months, maybe even longer, it's a big, big blow, not least to City but of course for De Bruyne himself. Will I play? No, it's just a competition, a job or anything. Months, yeah. Probably like seven or something. Basically, I'm a 32-year-old football player who's been playing for 15 years, almost 700 games. Sometimes it goes too hard. I had a couple of hamstring injuries and now basically my hamstring was a wet paper towel. That's what they called it after surgery. Yeah, I don't know. It's like if in a direct translation they would say a wet paper towel. Because of the injuries that I had, so many scarring, so that was the issue that the whole hamstring was just getting really weak and then obviously the tendon was ruptured and they did what they needed to do, clean it out and it was the best decision. What is Kevin doing? Through any real process, we have milestones, we have exit criteria and we want to see you walk before you run. We want to see you do all these things in a stepwise progression and it's kind of reverse engineering. We know where we want Kev to be at the end. If anything, we aim higher than he was and then we work backwards. So, right, to get to this point, to go into training, where do we need him to be on pitch? How much time do we need to allow him to adapt and to do the different movements that we need in order to get the confidence and the repetition that he can go into training? And then it's kind of going, right, okay, well this is a football, so it's now for Kev. What other things can we do to help him along this process? From nutrition, to kind of player ops, to sports science, to medical, to physios. Everybody was aware of the plan and had the ability to contribute so that we could give Kev the best support possible. I don't think people necessarily understand when you're playing every three days, there's just no time to work on a lot of things because you're just going from playing to recovery, to playing to recovery and I've been doing this for 14, 15 years straight and then especially the last 10 years I've been playing European Cups, national team. You know what happened when I was here at 25, I played 76 games that year. 76. We woke up, we played until third and fourth place and then here we went... So I've always never had the time to either rest or work on some things that I probably needed to work on. Obviously I knew I was going to be out for about five months so I actually had some time to do that. Day 147, we're getting there. It's a tough one because when a player's injured it's not where they want to be. It tends to be professionally the lowest point that they're going to be at. It takes a degree of adjustment. We try and keep them on a fairly consistent programme which helps from just a rehab and a training perspective. We can understand when we need to train and when we need to recover and when we're going to fit all the different components of that into Kev's week. But I think to just have that ability to be a little bit flexible and to occasionally drop the kids off at school or pick the kids up and not miss birthdays and family gatherings and meals, that should be something that you maximise when you can. If I wanted to plan a weekend with the family or go to Belgium or see my friends, I was able to plan that in advance. Obviously normally it doesn't work out, does it? There's no chance and in a way it was nice to do some normal stuff and just have fun outside of football. This is great to be here. In a way I enjoyed it because there's things that I've never done in 15 years and all these little trips that I've done always fell in a period where it was time for me to get a little break and rest my body and enjoy myself. So it was good. Obviously when we played the Club World Cup I was starting to train with the team so I was pretty much involved with it. Obviously you want to play so that's still a different feeling but that was actually nice to be there. It was a lot of positives for me and just to be around the team and winning that fifth one. Well the headline news today is actually on the bench where for the first time since August is the sight of Kevin De Bruyne. A serious hamstring injury which required surgery has seen his enforced absence. Might we see a little cameo from him this afternoon? We spoke about it and we said like let's just be involved with the team but I'm not going to play. So I know what is happening. I'm just going to get a little bit in a rhythm of being back with the squad before it actually happens. You know warm up on the touchline knowing that the people are going to be happy maybe about seeing me back after being out for that long and that was about it. It was actually like a quite relaxing experience. I didn't know it was going to be that loud. It was actually really, really loud and I was a little bit surprised. You know you don't really want to know what to do. You still want to be serious. I'm not going to fly around and say hey guys how is it? I don't know it's just it was really nice and yeah special. Well that's what it means to these Manchester City fans to see him back. I mean I've never ever been at a ground where 40-odd thousand people are standing up clapping a substitute warming up. What Kevin needs is accumulate weeks training sessions. Weeks and weeks and weeks and minutes. Weeks and minutes. The Blues begin the defence of BFA Cup. They won as the second part of that historic treble. It felt good. I got out of the game what I needed to get. You know it was good to have some touches, some runs. I came in and we scored really quickly 3-4-0 and I just felt comfortable. That's all that I really needed at that time. Kevin De Bruyne off the bench got an assist as if he's never been away. Apart from the fact that he's got a new floppy haircut which I quite like. Just to differentiate this season's Kevin De Bruyne. Made it look like he'd been out injured since the 1990s. Yeah. You know why I like his hair? Because somewhere along the line he said I'm going to change my hair man. There's no plan actually I don't know. It's not always easy when you play with it. But then I said I'm not playing for a long time so we'll just grow it a bit and see how it goes. I'm happy about it so I don't know there's not really a plan. People say I look a little bit younger now so maybe I'll have to take it. What do you think about his haircut? I'm jealous. It feels special. It feels exciting. Both sets of players will feel that it could be Liverpool. Goku. The space for Walker. A glorious goal. Exquisite from Bernardo Silva. Runeke Moraes hits the first time ball to Isak. He hits the shot into the net. It's Newcastle 1 City 1. Space for Gordon. Gordon's gone for goal. Inside 37. Castle thrillingly have turned this game on its head. I came in the game and it went so quickly. I felt like I was only on the pitch for a couple of minutes and I was there for probably about 20 minutes or something. But it couldn't be a better way to come back into the Premier League. Returns the Premier League stage of one of its finest entertainers. Everyone kind of slept on just how much of an impact he would cause. I didn't expect it to be this quickly off the bench and in quite so emphatic a way. I mean it was just an inspired Kevin De Bruyne. We all know he's got that in his locker. He is one superb footballer. KDB we've missed you. We love you. It's 2-2. How great was it to be back out there playing football in the Premier League? I missed this, you know. Kevin De Bruyne are back. What a 24 minutes of Premier League football. To be fair, I think it was more on willpower than anything else. But yeah, it was crazy. You know, he impacted the game. Look at the pass that he done to that Oscar Bob Dole. De Bruyne's ball. Bob's coming in. Bob's in. Oh, he scored! De Bruyne coming off the bench with 20 minutes to go. City at that point were 2-1 down. A goal and an assist later and it was three points for the champions. To come back after that long out and to perform how he did. The king is back. That's what it is. It seems a long time. In the scope of things, it's not. You know, it's very quick from you go from operation to feeling like you're never going to do anything normal again. To then at least being in the gym and being occupied. And then you blink. It's like the season. You blink and almost he's back playing. Sometimes it's an opportunity to get better. Which sounds ridiculous when you're somebody at Kevin De Bruyne's level. You know, the fact he's come in and he's hit the ground running. You know, early days. But the performance has been good. He's feeling good. I think, you know, again speaks to Kev's kind of application. And drive to get better even at this stage of his career. I was never really scared about coming back on a good level or something, you know. I think it just depends on the will more than, you know. I've been playing for 14, 15 years. So I don't see why in a way I would fall off quickly. I just want to be the best player I can be. And help the team win. And then hopefully just have a good second part of the season. What for me is maybe the first part. So I don't know where it can get me. But I'm happy with the way everything went. I'm happy how I feel now. So hopefully I can just have a good six months now. And then see where it ends up.