Frédéric Waseige was starting to lose hope. In the pouring rain, he stood on the Cristal Arena touchline, waiting for the green light from the TV studio to do his post-match interview with an 18-year-old Kevin De Bruyne. They had no umbrella to shelter them from the elements. The adolescent, who had recently joined Racing Genk, had been the game’s best player; and now he was soaked to the skin, being told every few minutes that he’d have to wait a little longer for the camera to roll and the questions to begin. Waseige understood how it must have felt for the child. Before becoming the most popular analyst in French-speaking Belgium, he was a player for FC Liège, playing against Juventus in the Cup Winners’ Cup quarterfinal in 1991.
He knew that the one place De Bruyne wanted to be right here, right now, was his team’s dressing room, not a now deserted rainswept stadium. So he apologised, again and again, fearing the player might disappear any second. Yet De Bruyne himself seemed unaffected by the wait. “Te tracasse pas” (“No worries”), he kept saying. “I was so embarrassed,” Waseige recalls. “But that’s Kevin for you. Should the same thing happen again today, he’d behave exactly the same way. Te tracasse pas! He never changed. What you see is what you get, and what you get is something unique: a great player who is also a normal person.”
View the image in fullscreen.De Bruyne played for Genk in the August 2009 Europa League playoffs in Lille. Photograph: PA Images/Alamy.
Some might challenge the label “normal” when given to De Bruyne, who sees a football pitch as a 3D stage that can be read and adjusted to match his own vision. The coaches who looked after him at Gent, when he was a mere child blessed with a shot of such power that his father, in order to protect his plants, forbade him from using his preferred right foot when playing in the family garden, were astounded by his peripheral vision and the speed with which he made decisions. Young Kevin saw things that others couldn’t fathom, and he still does, whether for Manchester City or Belgium. Jérémy Doku, his teammate on both sides, possesses the speed and skill to destabilise any defence when given the ball at the appropriate time, angle, and pace. However, with the Red Devils, no other player seemed to be able to find him as consistently as KDB does – without Doku being whistled offside. De Bruyne considers this “normal”. 
This “normality” comes with a cost. De Bruyne, whose Belgium team faces Slovakia in their opening Euro 2024 game on Monday, has no interest in learning how to conceal his thoughts and control his emotions. This does not imply that he is prone to excessive mood swings and outbursts of rage; rather, he expresses what he feels and says what he thinks. He is aware that he is better than most people, practically everyone, yet he does not feel himself superior to anyone as a result, which is not as paradoxical as it may appear. There is no smugness or conceit in him. He just doesn’t understand why he should use his unique skill to denigrate, lie, or abuse others. He is unvarnished and beautifully so.
At the 2022 World Cup, while his teammates were celebrating Michi Batshuayi’s winning goal against Canada, he ran to Roberto Martínez’s technical area to complain about Belgium’s tendency to hit long balls instead of exploiting gaps in the Canadian midfield. Toby Alderweireld attempted to join the discussion in order to reprimand his midfielder and remind him of his position. De Bruyne informed him what he could do with these remonstrations, with little regard for the cameras trained on him. The natural had acted naturally, that was all.
LUDWIGSBURG, GERMANY – JUNE 12: Domenico Tedesco, Head Coach of Belgium, poses for a portrait during the Belgium Portrait session ahead of the UEFA EURO 2024 Germany on June 12, 2024 in Ludwigsburg, Germany. (Photo by Sebastian Widmann – UEFA/UEFA via Getty Images)” width=”7951″ height=”4771″ class=”dcr-1e3yjba” align=”center” style=”max-width: 100%; margin-bottom: 30px; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; display: block;”>Domenico Tedesco: ‘My Belgium team is young, hungry and very talented’Read more
The truth is that, for some reason, De Bruyne was not feeling happy at the 2022 World Cup. His body language did not “betray” it – as there was no attempt to conceal some hidden suffering known to himself alone. What TV viewers could feel five minutes into the first game back at home was felt 10 times over in the Belgian camp in Qatar.
Perhaps it was exhaustion; the game versus Canada was his 50th for club and country this year. Perhaps he was frustrated with his own performance during tournament preparations. What is certain is that there was no lack of willingness or interest in the cause. Something did not feel right to him, and he was unable to hide it.
The trouble is that people around him, who generally feed off of his brilliance, were abruptly deprived of the air required to fully expand their lungs. De Bruyne is more than simply their conductor; he also plays the oboe, which everyone listens to before the show. When he goes off key, the consequence is a pandemonium. As a result, they too became laborious, unfocused, and hesitant. Morocco defeated them in the following game, and a scoreless draw with Croatia was insufficient to go to the round of 16. If you want to know if the sun will shine on Belgium or not, there is no better barometer to use than De Bruyne’s.
View the image in fullscreen.De Bruyne charges forward in the 2022 World Cup match against Canada. Photograph: Molly Darlington/Reuters.
The bad news for Belgium’s upcoming opponents is that the Euro 2024 version of De Bruyne is nothing like the grump who, despite his will, looked lost in Qatar 2022. Despite missing a significant portion of the 2023-24 season with Manchester City due to a hamstring injury, he appears to have recovered significantly. For most footballers, forced absences are like purgatory.
For De Bruyne, it was just another hiccup in the road, an opportunity to drive the kids to school for a change and be what he enjoys most: normal. It took fifteen months between his performance in a 3-2 triumph over Germany in March of last year and the goal he scored on his return in a simple 2-0 win over Montenegro on June 6. He appears fit, joyful, and menacing. He glances at himself again.