Kevin De Bruyne scored the only goal of the match to clinch the victory for the Citizens. City's victory extended their lead at the summit of the Premier League to 11 points. On the other hand, the Blues' loss saw them surrender second place in the league to Liverpool, who beat Brentford 3-0.
Even to this day, it remains almost inconceivable how Chelsea managed to let a generational talent like De Bruyne slip through their fingers. The Belgian's first season as a Chelsea player in 2012-13 was spent on loan at Werder Bremen. While in northern Germany, De Bruyne clearly established himself as a star of the future. The Belgian was named the Bundesliga's Young Player of the Year after almost single-handedly saving the club from relegation at the age of just 21.
Inexplicably, Chelsea took absolutely no notice of this and almost never fielded him after his return to Stamford Bridge. De Bruyne would feature in just three league matches during the first half of the 2013-14 season before being signed by VfL Wolfsburg for €22 million in January 2014. It would be at Wolfsburg where De Bruyne would emerge as a bona fide superstar. He was selected as the Bundesliga's Player of the Year in 2014-15 after leading Wolfsburg to second place in the league - their best finish since their astonishing league triumph in 2008-09. De Bruyne was also the driving force behind Wolfsburg's first-ever DFB-Pokal title in that same season.
Not long after, City came for De Bruyne's services and signed him for €75 million. The rest, as they say, is history. Almost seven years later, De Bruyne has now become a true City legend - easily one of the Manchester club's five best players ever with an argument for #1. He is rightly recognized as one of the best playmakers in the world not only today, but also of all time. To top it all off, De Bruyne has even arguably surpassed former Chelsea teammate Eden Hazard as the greatest Belgian player ever.
Chelsea's failure to retain De Bruyne is absolutely inexcusable. After being presented with the evidence of what he'd done in his one season on loan at Werder, it should have been obvious that De Bruyne was "that guy". For some reason, however, Chelsea chose to ignore the proof and left him behind Oscar, Willian, and André Schürrle in the pecking order. None of those players ever ended up being even close to De Bruyne's level. Undoubtedly, Chelsea's decision to give up on De Bruyne in 2014 has to go down as one of the all-time transfer fails.
Astonishingly, just a few months after De Bruyne's departure, Chelsea would repeat the same error with his compatriot. Over the preceding two seasons, Romelu Lukaku had established himself as a legitimate goalscoring threat in the Premier League. Lukaku had just finished a season on loan at Everton, where he had amassed double figures in the goals column for the second time. Nevertheless, Chelsea deemed him to be surplus to requirements and made his spot at Everton a permanent one. Lukaku would later go on to become one of the world's best centre-forwards, culminating in a victorious Serie A campaign with Inter Milan in 2020-21. Ironically, Lukaku has since returned to the London club, only to enter the worst slump of his career to date.
To be fair to Chelsea, they are run much better today than they were three or four years ago. It is much less likely that the Chelsea of today would have failed to see De Bruyne's potential the way that the Chelsea of back then did. However, every new page that De Bruyne continues to add to his story only serves to rub it in even more - the only two words that come to mind are "what if".
There are some mistakes that never truly leave a club because of how utterly monumental in scope they are. Despite what Chelsea have already accomplished in the years since De Bruyne's departure, no one can dispute that every time he comes back to haunt them, it was entirely of their own doing.
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