Jose Mourinho says he recognised Kevin de Bruyne’s potential when he was Chelsea boss and did not want him to leave, saying it was the player who forced his way out of Stamford Bridge.
The London club signed a 18-year-old De Bruyne from Genk in 2012 but he played ony nine first-team matches before joining Wolfsburg.
Given De Bruyne’s development over the past decade, his exit from Chelsea does not reflect well on Chelsea or Mourinho but the Portuguese coach has played down his involvement in the move.
De Bruyne is currently with the Belgium team at Euro 2020 and helped United top Group B with three victories from three.
Mourinho told talkSPORT: ‘Kevin is an amazing player, in this moment he is one of the best players in the world, no doubt about it. My story with Kevin was fun, and in the end it worked very well for him of course.
‘I arrived in my second spell at Chelsea and we go to Asia to play some matches and train, and Kevin was supposed to come with us and then leave on loan after the tour.
‘He impressed me so much I made the decision, “I don’t want this kid to go on loan, I want him to stay”, and in our first match of the Premier League season he started against Hull City, in the second match we go to Old Trafford [and didn’t play].
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‘After this he came to me and said, “I want to play every match, I want to play every minute” and the kid that was supposed to go on loan was not even happy to stay and to grow up in there.
‘So he put a lot of pressure to leave, he wanted to go to Germany where he was previously on loan and was so happy developing in the Bundesliga, and his decision was to go.
‘He put huge pressure on that and it worked very well for him. In the end Chelsea sold him and the story is there.
‘The quality of the player is absolutely amazing, he is in the top five in the world, and when he was supposed to leave on loan and I made the decision for him to stay, I saw those qualities.
‘He did not have the experience and maturity he has now, but his feet and his vision were already there.’
Mourinho added: ‘He was not an easy kid, in the sense it was not so easy to communicate with him, he was very clear and it was very difficult to change [his mind].
‘He knew very well what he wanted and he was not ready to have that season at Chelsea where a lot of good players were in the same team, he didn’t have that, let’s say, patience to not start every game or be on the bench.
‘He was not ready for that, he was coming from a season in Germany where he played basically every minute of every match, and he was happy to accept a situation like that.
‘Sometimes us coaches make mistakes, and we don’t consider that this player has the potential to do this in the future, but that was not the case with Kevin.
‘I saw he had the potential to do it, but he was just a kid who was very clear in his mind. He knew perfectly what he wanted.’
