How De Bruyne stunned Guardiola and earned City move with record-breaking season

The Premier League record books may yet agonisingly elude Kevin De Bruyne, marooned on 16 assists for the season with ten games left to set a new record of 21.

Manchester City's chief creator has been unplayable this season and believes his game is more complete than it has ever been in his career. But to see him raising the standards of the league is no surprise to anyone that knew him during his time at VFL Wolfsburg.

If some thought of De Bruyne as an expensive Chelsea flop in 2015, City paid a then-club record fee of £54m for somebody that had hit a Bundesliga record of 21 assists in the previous season.

Wolfsburg sporting director Klaus Allofs was the driving force behind his permanent switch from Chelsea in January 2014. Having seen the youngster impress on loan at Werder Bremen during the 2012/13 campaign, he jumped at the chance to give him the game time that Jose Mourinho would not.

"I knew Kevin as coach of other teams that played against Bremen. This gave us a good overview of his qualities," Wolfsburg coach at the time Dieter Hecking told M.E.N Sport.

"We generally had a very offensive team and saw in Kevin the piece of the puzzle that makes our game even more unpredictable and a creative player who can make the difference at any time."

De Bruyne needed time to get up to speed with both regular football and the particular demands of the Bundesliga, but he was still able to have an impact in the second half of the 2013/14 season with three assists and three goals in his final seven appearances. If that warned the rest of the league of what was to come, the rest of the Wolfsburg squad already knew what a talent had arrived.

"I've already seen his potential when he played for Werder Bremen before he came over to Wolfsburg, but obviously, I've really got to know him when we became teammates," recalled Ivica Olic. "From the first training session you could see his quality, and after the first few matches we knew that we got a real contributor to the team.

"He showed his qualities really quickly. As a forward, I can vouch for that - his passing, through-balls and assists were off the charts good. Maybe at the beginning it was not easy to look at him as a star, but all of us who trained with him knew what he was a fantastic, rare talent who could only be stopped by injuries, God forbid. He showed his quality in every game, he was a difference maker.

"I spent a lot of time with him and my Croatian teammate Ivan Perišić, so I got to know him as a person as well. For such a young man and a player, he was so mature on and off the field."

Wolfsburg had won their first German title in 2009 but their fifth-placed finish in 2014 under Hecking was their highest since then. The battle to push Bayern Munich had always been hard and, up against a Pep Guardiola side that had just streaked to the title in record time and Jurgen Klopp's Dortmund, the challenge can rarely have been more difficult.

Having been thumped 6-1 by Bayern in March of that year, Hecking's side started the 2014/15 campaign with a 2-1 defeat to the champions.

A De Bruyne assist and a 2-2 draw with Eintracht Frankfurt got both player and club onto the scoreboard, and from there the Wolfsburg bandwagon really started rolling with eight wins in nine games between September and December. When they broke off for the winter break, Wolfsburg were second in the table and De Bruyne had already notched three goals and ten assists.

But as the squad recharged ahead of their next game with Guardiola's league leaders, tragedy rocked the squad. Junior Malanda, a 20-year-old Belgian midfielder in the squad, was killed in a car crash on the day that he was expected to fly with his teammates for a training camp.

Three weeks later came a memorable evening inside the Volkswagen Arena.

"Our match against Bayern Munich was the first game after the death of our teammate Junior Malanda," former defender and now Wolfsburg sporting director Marcel Schafer told M.E.N Sport. "We won 4-1 and Kevin, who was a friend of Junior, showed an outstanding performance and led us by shooting two goals to this big big win. Nobody in Wolfsburg will ever forget this night."

De Bruyne, aged 23, had responded to the devastating news with an outstanding performance, scoring twice and also getting an assist to double the number of goals Bayern had conceded for the season and inflict their first meaningful league defeat under Guardiola.

Any hope of a title race were dashed the very next game in a 1-1 draw with Frankfurt that saw De Bruyne given a hefty fine for swearing at a ballboy in his attempt to speed up the game. An apology and a signed shirt would follow from the player, but it did not affect his form.

A number of star performances including a hat-trick of assists against Werder Bremen saw him end the season with 10 goals and 21 assists as Wolfsburg claimed the runner-up spot behind Guardiola's runaway champions. The club has never finished higher than sixth since and the league has never seen more assists from one player in a single campaign before or since.

To crown his success, he won the Player of the Year award - only the fifth non-German to claim the prize in the 60 years it has been given out. "To be named the best player in a foreign country – that's some going," said De Bruyne at the time in his typically dry way.

For Wolfsburg, it was vindication of the potential they had seen years earlier.

"Every opponent had respect for our team because they knew we had a player in our own ranks who could make the difference," said Hecking. "Kevin is a team player, unselfish with an outstanding football IQ.

"In addition, he is able to go all the way both offensively and defensively. That quickly brought him enormous recognition in Wolfsburg, but also in the Bundesliga. There was no doubt that he would win the German player of the year award."

Inevitably, his performances also drew the attention of bigger clubs. Guardiola wanted him at Bayern Munich and Paris Saint-Germain were interested but Txiki Begiristain would land his man and bring him to City.

Before a summer of transfer frenzy though, De Bruyne had cemented his reputation at Wolfsburg with his performance in the German cup final a week after the season had ended.

A goal in a 3-1 win over Dortmund in Klopp's farewell game does not do justice to the impact the Belgian made.

"Every day that I could work with him was a pleasure," said Hecking. "You saw in every training session and in every game that it's the player who can win games with one single action. If I had to give a concrete example, it would be the cup final against Dortmund in 2015, where you could see his strong mentality.

"Kevin was sitting in the locker room at half time with a huge laceration on his ankle and was supposed to be replaced, but all he said was 'No, don't change me, I want to win the title.' "These are the players a team needs to win titles. Kevin's a winner. He was a winner back then in Wolfsburg and he's proving that week after week now with Manchester City."

As some mocked City for lavishly spending on a player that had been previously found wanting in the Premier League, Begiristain would have no doubts about the quality and character of the star that would bend another league to his will.

He impressed in his first season in Manchester under Manuel Pellegrini but it was the arrival of Guardiola that would send De Bruyne into another stratosphere - or the next table down from Lionel Messi in the former Barcelona manager's words.

There were 19 league assists in the first trophyless campaign and 16 in City's Centurions campaign where he relentless drove the Blues on right up to his last kick of the season. After injury last year, the 28-year-old has been sublime again this season despite the team's difficulties.

Anyone forward has played with him still dreams about the delivery played, and Olic agrees with De Bruyne that he has improved his game even further at the Etihad.

"I think he's been one of the best in the world at his position for several years now," he said. "He has a strong character and winning mentality - when you combine that with all the qualities he has, which are substantial, you get a world-class player who is performing at a high level year by year.

"There's not much room for improvement - he is already at a top-level physically, so he covers a lot of ground during the game, and if you look at the goals and assists, he's doing great every year. For him, it's only important to stay healthy and he can continue performing at this level, which is being one of the best midfielders in the world."