{"id":21062,"date":"2025-10-14T15:37:50","date_gmt":"2025-10-14T15:37:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/did-manchester-city-let-kevin-de-bruyne-leave-too-soon\/"},"modified":"2025-10-14T15:37:50","modified_gmt":"2025-10-14T15:37:50","slug":"did-manchester-city-let-kevin-de-bruyne-leave-too-soon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/did-manchester-city-let-kevin-de-bruyne-leave-too-soon\/","title":{"rendered":"Did Manchester City let Kevin De Bruyne leave too soon?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\"><b class=\"ssrcss-1xjjfut-BoldText e5tfeyi3\">&#8216;Legendary&#8217;, &#8216;pure class&#8217; and &#8216;on another level&#8217; are just some of the terms used to describe Kevin de Bruyne this week. <\/b><\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The Belgian is enjoying one of his best starts to a season since moving to Napoli on a free transfer this summer which begs the question, did he leave Manchester City a year too early?<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The exodus of senior City players in the past year has been well documented, with the likes of Ederson, Jack Grealish, Ilkay Gundogan and Kyle Walker all leaving for pastures new.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">De Bruyne was also deemed surplus to requirements &#8211; despite 16 trophies and more than 400 appearances &#8211; and the midfielder, reluctant to leave, joined Napoli when his contract expired in June.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;I was a bit surprised but I just have to accept it,&#8221; said De Bruyne back in April. &#8220;Honestly, I still think I can perform at this level like I&#8217;m showing, but I understand clubs have to make decisions.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">It turns out the 34-year-old was correct in his self-assessment.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/sport\/football\/articles\/cvg73308qygo?at_medium=RSS&#038;at_campaign=rss\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8216;Legendary&#8217;, &#8216;pure class&#8217; and &#8216;on another level&#8217; are just some of the terms used to describe Kevin de Bruyne this week. The Belgian is enjoying one of his best starts to a season since moving to Napoli on a free transfer this summer which begs the question, did he leave Manchester City a year too [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21063,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21062","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-top-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21062","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21062"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21062\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21064,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21062\/revisions\/21064"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21063"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21062"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21062"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21062"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}