Manchester City vs Brighton: The flash of brilliance that proved Kevin De Bruyne is returning to his best

Kevin De Bruyne’s brain was never the problem.

De Bruyne believes that he has the best football brain in the world game and given his performances for Manchester City it is hard to disagree. When De Bruyne was 18 and playing for KRC Genk his manager with Hein Vanhaezebrouck compared him to Johan Cruyff, for how he can “see everything” on the pitch, not just near him but far away.

“It’s about vista, the view that they have of the players,” Vanhaezebrouck says. “Some guys only see a ‘narrow street’, or sees the man at 20 metres. Kevin sees the guy at 60, 70 metres.”

Throughout his career De Bruyne has carried this unusual gift with him, the ability to view the football pitch as if he was looking down on a chessboard, rather than as one moving piece on it.

That gift propelled him to Manchester City and last season he was their best and most important player: one of the few with the deepest understanding of Pep Guardiola’s instructions, and rewarded with the most freedom within the system as a result. Last year’s 100-point haul would not have been possible without him.

But this year De Bruyne’s body has let him down. One knee injury put him out for two months, another for six weeks, and then just as he was getting sharp again he had another hamstring strain. He has never been able to get a good rhythm going, coming into the team and dropping back out, struggling to complete 90 minutes. His brain has been as sharp as ever, of course. He can still see every run and spot every pass. The issue has been physically executing it.

Maybe this semi-final at Wembley was the day this changed. This was not a classic game, with little to commend it either for competitive tension or drama. It was not much of an advert for the FA Cup. But Manchester City will not especially mind that. Because it was decided by one brilliant move, the only flash of class all game, just four minutes in. And that came from the right boot of De Bruyne.

There was nothing novel about the assist that won the game. City have scored this goal dozens of times before. It is extremely difficult to stop, even if you know it is coming. And if they are back scoring goals like this, and if De Bruyne is spotting and executing passes like this, then it suggests that his legs are finally catching up with his brain again, after a season in which they have not quite been in sync.

The game was just three minutes in when De Bruyne decided it. He pulled out in that space on the right, where he could easily receive the ball laid off to him by Bernardo Silva. He had time to look up but he barely glanced. He knows where the players are, he has known all along. With his first touch he set himself and with his second he whipped the ball into the box. This time, after a season of frustration, his body did not let him down. The ball went precisely where he wanted it to, round the back of the Brighton defence, bending right into the path of Gabriel Jesus’ diving header.

The whole thing was echt De Bruyne: the complete internalisation of City’s patterns of play, the awareness of space, the vision to spot the pass, the precision to execute it. It was the De Bruyne who powered City to the title last year, but who they have missed this season. The De Bruyne who can see the passes but the De Bruyne who can now make them again too. He is not at his maximum and will not be again this season, but he is close enough to win games again.

De Bruyne did not too much after that but he did not need to. City saw out the rest of the game as if it were a run-of-the-mill Premier League game, the type that would be buried on Match of the Day some time after 11pm. De Bruyne was withdrawn after an hour, conserving his energy for the next challenge. No City are not providing the thrills that Liverpool are right now, but they do not need to, they just keep winning, staying in as many competitions as they can until the end.

For most of this season City have had to make do without De Bruyne, but now Guardiola can call on his five first-choice midfielders all over again. City are back in London on Tuesday night for a Champions League quarter-final. And they arrive with a De Bruyne closer than he has been all season to the player of last year.