Kevin De Bruyne’s move to Napoli this week felt understated: one of the finest players of a generation switching clubs for the first time in a decade, to little fanfare. The arranging of his medical in Rome, not Naples, played a part, avoiding the crowds that would have turned out to greet him. A handful of fans still found a way to be there when he arrived at the Villa Stuart clinic, 140 miles from their team’s home ground.
Confirmation of his move came first from the Italian team’s owner, Aurelio De Laurentiis, who posted a picture to social media of them sat side-by-side in director’s chairs. “Welcome Kevin!” were the accompanying words.
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The tonal shift from De Laurentiis’s earlier work was marked. This is a man who once unveiled Gökhan Inler – a Swiss international, but certainly a less noteworthy talent than De Bruyne – by having him show up in a lion mask to a soiree on a cruise ship.
Times change and so have Napoli. A club who used to sell themselves as scene-stealing underdogs have begun to project a different image: of a team that knows it can win trophies and intends to keep doing so. One whose international brand has strengthened to the point where they can land a player like De Bruyne.
He is hardly the first big signing of De Laurentiis’s tenure. Gonzalo Higuaín had scored 121 goals for Real Madrid and won La Liga three times before he joined Napoli. Victor Osimhen cost more than €70m to acquire from Lille.
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Still, De Bruyne belongs to a different category: one of the best performers in Premier League history, with six winners’ medals and two player-of-the-season awards – the latter achievement placing him in exalted company alongside Thierry Henry, Cristiano Ronaldo, Nemanja Vidic and Mohamed Salah. De Bruyne is also a European champion, who pushed his body to breaking point to help Manchester City get across the line in 2023.
Since buying the rights to a bankrupt club in 2004, De Laurentiis has rebuilt Napoli’s image in part through a strategy of progressively more high-profile transfers and managerial appointments. Having made his fortune in the movie industry, he understands better than most the difference that a sprinkling of stardust can make.
De Bruyne will be 34 by the time he plays his first game for Napoli, and the last two years at City suggest his body is no longer capable of performing at the levels it once did. Even so, a player who chipped in eight goals and 17 assists over the last two Premier League seasons, while starting only 34 games, plainly still has things left to contribute. And his power as a leading man may yet be undimmed.
According to the newspaper Il Corriere dello Sport, Napoli’s Instagram added in excess of 500,000 new followers – more than 10% of their total – within hours of De Bruyne being announced. These are details that will make some football fans roll their eyes, but in the business of the modern game they matter.
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Related: The year of Napoli and Scott McTominay: the Serie A season review
Social media following is one metric companies assess when negotiating commercial deals with football clubs. But there are more subtle impacts, too. It would be naïve to imagine that footballers, each a ‘brand’ in their own right, do not sometimes think about their teams’ online presence and how it ties up with their own.
It is not so much that De Bruyne’s signing transforms the landscape for Napoli, but it might consolidate a trend. They have won two Serie A titles in three years, yet those successes have felt oddly unconnected – achieved under different managers with different tactics using different players in key roles.
The 2022-23 Scudetto was a bolt from the blue, Luciano Spalletti harnessing the talent of a newly-discovered Khvicha Kvaratskhelia as well as a break-out year for Osimhen. Last season was something different, a fresh project under Antonio Conte that came together quicker than anyone expected.
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“We had set ourselves the target of getting back into Europe, not even the Champions League,” Conte told Italy’s Sky Sport this week. “We wanted to have one more year of growth, then try to compete to win things in the third year.”
The tension between the manager’s ‘slow-and-steady’ vision, and the escalating pressure to keep winning as his team emerged as a front-runner, almost brought his tenure to a premature end. Even as Napoli celebrated their title, his gestures toward De Laurentiis appeared frosty. Was it the promise of signing players like De Bruyne that ultimately persuaded Conte to stay around?
To reverse the question, how important was the manager’s presence in convincing De Bruyne to make this move? There were offers on the table from teams in the United States and Saudi Arabia, but De Bruyne still has the itch to compete at Europe’s highest levels. Last season only confirmed Conte’s astonishing ability to deliver silverware almost everywhere he goes.
Then again, perhaps there were other factors. De Bruyne may have spoken to his Belgium team-mate Romelu Lukaku, who racked up 14 goals and 10 assists after joining Napoli from Chelsea last summer. Or their compatriot Dries Mertens, who played nine seasons for the Partenopei and fell so head-over-heels in love with the city that when he speaks of “home” this is still the place of which he thinks, despite leaving to join Galatasaray in 2022. Mertens was awarded honorary citizenship of Naples this month.
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Or maybe it was even just witnessing another player move here from Manchester and reimagine their career. Scott McTominay went from United cast-off to Serie A MVP in nine months. It will be fascinating to see how Conte uses them together. He showed his flexibility this season, tearing up his original tactical plans to exploit the Scotland international’s strengths to the fullest.
There is every reason to believe De Bruyne can be a hit, too. A cliché it may be, but it remains true that the football played in Serie A is slower and more tactical than the Premier League. With more time on the ball, he will have an opportunity to reinvent himself all over again – as he did repeatedly throughout the different chapters of his time under Pep Guardiola at City.
Related: Farewell Kevin De Bruyne: Manchester City’s genius and a law unto himself | Simon Hattenstone
As long ago as 2016, De Bruyne told Britain’s Sky Sports that “I am used to playing in six different positions.” By now we might be into double figures. He was at different times for City a box-to-box midfielder, a deep-lying playmaker, a winger, a No 10 and a false nine.
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“I still have a lot to give,” De Bruyne said this April, as he contemplated a life after City. “Obviously I know I’m not 25 any more, but I still feel like I can do my job.”
He will do it now in Naples, under a manager who always wins and for an owner whose ambitions continue to grow. One of Conte’s oft-repeated frustrations last season was that his club had done its business late in the transfer window, leaving him little time to prepare. Landing De Bruyne this early may well be signal a more aggressive summer ahead.
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