CorSport: De Bruyne trades joy for graft, joins Napoli for UCL | OneFootball

CorSport – De Bruyne has left the football of joy for that of sacrifice, wearing the Napoli shirt

Moving from Guardiola’s garden to Antonio Conte’s vegetable patch (with all the troubles that come with it) is a problem. And this is Kevin De Bruyne’s problem. Leaving a place of delights to enter a workplace, from the fun (now faded) of Manchester City to the Napoli of “we must suffer.” The world changes, sunsets change. But the Belgian champion is well aware of this transition. About his new teammates and training methods, he said: “I am the one who must adapt to them, not the other way around.” Kevin De Bruyne must adapt to the Italian league, not exactly the epitome of elegance and beautiful play, but a field of battles, cunning, clashes and defensive walls, waste and rust. He needs time to learn. He has the desire because he freely chose this new destination, because he chose Napoli and Napoli chose him. And he chose to be coached by the Conte of a hundred tortures, leaving behind the Pep of a hundred caresses.

In Manchester’s garden, the ball was everything: playing the ball, controlling the ball, passing the ball, caressing the ball, keeping the ball. There was no boredom, no sacrifice. There was joy. Sometimes, often, it was a game for its own sake. With the grace of a touch, the delight of a light run, the pleasure of a dance on the grass. Winning, which in football matters more than in life, was not a goal, but the inevitable consequence of having fun. City’s “bailado” football did not chase victory. It was victory that came to meet the happiness of that game. A children’s game. The opponents respected it.

Kevin De Bruyne was the delightful prince in that game of playful pages, he was so from the very beginning, from when Guardiola arrived in Manchester and said, let’s play this game, let’s take the ball and never give it up, back and forth, from one side to the other, without sweating, with pleasure, with enjoyment, the spell that enchanted opponents. Trophies poured in to seal the supremacy of fun.

However, it happened that in the ecstasy of that joy, in the do-or-die knockout matches of the Champions League, wary, tough opponents would insert themselves, disrespectful of beauty, who knew how to break the spell and humiliate the fun, and City’s “the ball is mine and I control it” would not get past the quarterfinals and, the one time they reached the finish line, they were brought down by the marathoners and warriors of Chelsea and, another time, struggled in Istanbul to beat Inter, a truly Italian team, with four shots on the Milanese goal against seven and a post from their opponents.

Guardiola’s garden was withering, the fun was ending, the ball began to slip away from the magic of Manchester’s Citizens. The other kind of football was taking over, the concrete and athletic football of results at any cost, the tactical football so Italian.

In this football, Kevin De Bruyne has chosen to launch the final flashes of his dazzling career. He will adapt, he has promised, he will no longer be a child with the ball, he will work with Conte to offer his genius to tactics, the ball becoming a tool and no longer a friend, matches no longer enjoyed but, when necessary, suffered, work instead of fun, sacrifice instead of joy. Playing by fighting. Battling disrespectful opponents. Making himself available in the fray. Kevin can be the leader at the service of a greater leader, the game-leader Conte wants, a game played all together, with continuous, stubborn, humble commitment, matches to be scraped, opponents to be afflicted, prey never to be released, the result as the only sovereign. An interesting experience for De Bruyne, from the ballroom to the trenches. Guardiola’s garden is gone. In Conte’s vegetable patch, you have to bend your back and get your hands dirty. De Bruyne will do it with the sensitivity of a champion who knows how to adapt to changes and acquire a new role to conclude a formidable career.

Carlo Gioia

This article was translated into English by Artificial Intelligence. You can read the original version in 🇮🇹 here.