The De Bruyne Show isn’t over yet as Premier League GOAT dazzles in crazy Man City comeback
It took a little while for the Crystal Palace players to realise they were supporting actors in The De Bruyne Show. What a performance from the Premier League’s greatest midfielder.
Oliver Glasner batted away suggestions he may leave Crystal Palace for RB Leipzig at the end of the season ahead of this game and the reason for the interest from the Bundesliga side could not have been more evident after half an hour at the Etihad. City were torn apart by quick transitions while struggling to break through the well-drilled defence, with those two key facets of Palace’s game, which have seen them climb into European contention and get off to a flying start here, also characterising the best Leipzig teams.
Whether planned on the basis of a match-up with Nico O’Reilly, who was making just his third Premier League start, or simply because he was always the obvious option, Palace got the ball to Daniel Munoz as quickly as possible. And the wing-back, brilliant though he is, didn’t need to be all that great to slice City open, with a lack of pressure on the ball and a high, bumpy defensive line making his task far too simple.
Ruben Dias was slow to step out as Munoz played Isamaila Sarr in behind before setting up Eberechi Eze to tap in the opener, and there were at least four other such instances in that opening period where just a couple of passes saw Palace create a chance.
It was all too easy, but it’s also true that the dismantling of City was made to look more simple than it was thanks to Adam Wharton, who has this wonderful habit of playing the passes we’re always shouting at midfielders to make but are invariably ignored for being too risky. We confess to an involuntary noise when he sent both De Bruyne and James McAtee to the shops with a drop of the shoulder before drilling the ball straight to the feet of Munoz.
It was Wharton’s excellent delivery from a corner which found Chris Richards leaping far above a flapping Ederson to nod in Palace’s 15th set-piece goal of the season and give them a 2-0 lead, and they were within a few inches of making it three as Eze’s brilliant cut inside and finish into the bottom corner was ruled out for a marginal offside as semi-automation got to work in its first Premier League outing.
It didn’t feel all that important a moment at the time as we had seen very little from City and everything from Palace to suggest it was anything other than a matter of time before the visitors would add to their lead. But while De Bruyne may be leaving, he’s not left yet.
This was the greatest Premier League midfielder playing as close to his best as we’ve seen all season and possibly for longer than that. Is it too big a coincidence that he produced this sort of dominant display just after he’s been told by the club he’s surplus to requirements? He certainly has no point to prove to us, but he proved it anyway.
Having hit the post from the edge of the box with no back-lift before waving his hands around in a bid to increase the volume at the Etihad, De Bruyne made the smallest of adjustments with his laser-guided right foot and hit a free-kick in off the post score City’s first, at which point his I’m Better Than Everyone Else muscle memory appeared to kick in.
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Omar Marmoush drew City level before the break, smashing a shot past Dean Henderson after De Bruyne nodded James McAtee’s excellent dinked cross to the back post across goal, before the Belgian laid the ball off for Mateo Kovacic to give them the lead early in the second half.
We’re not sure we’ve seen a game where we’ve thought This Could Be Anything in relation to the goalscoring prospects of both teams. It was an absurd swing in prosperity from Palace to City, almost entirely down to one man, albeit with Kovacic, McAtee and Marmoush acting as useful stooges in The De Bruyne Show.
The return of the midfield GOAT was cause for nostalgia at the Etihad in a game which turned into a late-season stroll so typical of Pep Guardiola’s sides over the last decade, and Ederson played his part in adding to that rosy retrospection by laying on his fourth assist of the season, booming a pass up for McAtee before the academy graduate went round a floundering Henderson to slot in.
Marmoush really should have scored his second of the game having got on the end of the most De Bruyne of all De Bruyne passes – that one that’s an inch away from the last defender’s boot and an inch ahead of the goalkeeper’s outstretched hand that Leroy Sane and Raheem Sterling were converting for fun when they had the pleasure of playing with the playmaker.
There was still time for the latest hint from O’Reilly that he could be the man to pick up the slack when De Bruyne leaves at the end of the season, as he side-footed in an excellent volley from the edge of the box, but what was made abundantly clear in this game, not that we should have needed the reminder, is that there is only one Kevin De Bruyne and City are on a hiding to nothing as they scour the market for replacements this summer.
