There are few footballers in the world who have the ability to render spectators speechless on a regular basis.
Lionel Messi is of course the master, although the likes of Mohamed Salah and Kylian Mbappe are no strangers to taking the breath away. There are players like Erling Haaland who amaze supporters as brutal forces of nature, not intricate, balletic technicians but equally as devastating.
In-between the two groups sits Kevin de Bruyne, a technical maestro but a supreme athlete all the same. The Manchester City midfielder has constantly evolved his game since arriving at the Etihad Stadium in 2015, to the extent that he can legitimately claim to be the best practitioner of the most complex position on the pitch.
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You can vote for De Bruyne as your Fans' Footballer of the Year - cast your vote below or by clicking here.
The 2022 version of De Bruyne is the most complete version yet. In his first season at City he was a wide attacker, someone to provide youthful energy and spark in an otherwise faltering attack.
Then he was a false nine, developing his all-round game in a selfless attacking role. Then he was the assist king - the 20 he provided in 2019/20 is the join-most in a single Premier League season.
Injuries have tried to derail him, but every time the Belgian has come back stronger. Last season he turned scorer of vital goals in a team that had no recognised striker, and this year he has done everything.
In 30 Premier League outings in 2022 he has scored 13 goals and provided 16 assists. 29 direct goal involvements in 30 games. This season he leads the way - by some distance - in terms of shot-creating and goal-creating actions per 90 minutes in the Premier League. His expected assists rating is 2.3 higher than the next-best player.
Focusing on the statistics is all well and good, but to do so with De Bruyne kind of misses the point. Haaland - City's other nominee for Fans' Footballer of the Year - is a stats player. He scores goals, shed loads of them, so many that your eyes bulge as numbers ping around inside your brain.
Haaland is an incredible player who wins games. He is inevitable, near-unstoppable. But with De Bruyne, the beauty is in the moment you witness his genius live, not the figures behind it.
There's the seemingly-simple through-ball that must be executed to the exact millimetre for it to come off. There's the pin-point cross from deep, from the byline, from anywhere in fact. The slipped passes through crowds of defenders that no-one else can see. Outside of the boot, instep, shovel, cross-field pinger. Then there's the thunderous strikes from distance, the dippers, swervers and curlers. He does it all and he does so exquisitely.
No player in world football comes close to De Bruyne when it comes to combining range of passing and vision. If you had to narrow down everything De Bruyne can do into one thing that takes the breathe away, it would be this:
De Bruyne leads the charge from the edge of City's box. He doesn't look like a sprinter, he's red in the cheeks, but when he gets going with open road ahead there are few quicker with the ball at their feet. Teammates flank him in support, and at the very last moment when it looks like he's held on to the ball too long, he picks the right pass. Every time.
De Bruyne was named the third-best male player in the world at the 2022 Ballon d'Or awards. Clearly not enough of the voters had witnessed his magic in the flesh.
You can vote for De Bruyne as your Fans' Footballer of the Year - cast your vote below or by clicking here.
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