Kevin De Bruyne has become the best-paid player in the Premier League after signing a new four-year contract worth £20 million a season.
De Bruyne represented himself during the six-month negotiation period, which ended yesterday when he agreed to extend his contract by two years until the summer of 2025.
De Bruyne, 29, will earn about £385,000 a week, which eclipses the £375,000-a-week contract that David De Gea signed with Manchester United in 2019. De Bruyne’s previous contract, which was due to expire in 2023, was worth roughly £300,000 a week.
The Belgium midfielder rejected City’s initial offer in January, but the club returned with a restructured deal in which De Bruyne would earn more up front and less in variables.
During talks with Txiki Begiristain, City’s director of football, De Bruyne made it clear that he wanted to win the Champions League and he was assured that signings would be made to help to realise that aim.
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City have one foot in the semi-finals after beating Borussia Dortmund 2-1 on Tuesday. They are 14 points clear at the top of the Premier League and are still in both domestic cup competitions.
When asked what his ambitions were for the rest of the season, De Bruyne said: “Win everything possible. I know we are in a good position, in a position where we can compete for these titles so hopefully at the end of the season we will have a few.”
Barcelona had explored the possibility of buying De Bruyne but the pandemic snuffed out any chance they had of signing the PFA player of the year as their debts have risen to £1 billion.
De Bruyne has won two Premier League titles, one FA Cup and four League Cups since City signed him from Wolfsburg for £55 million in 2015.
The vice-captain said that there was never any chance of him leaving. “When I came here I had big expectations and they have been exceeded,” he said. “We have been able to compete for every cup competition, every title, every Champions League, so to be there and do it in the right way excites me. I wouldn’t know why I would change that.”
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It is extremely rare for players to negotiate their contract renewals. De Bruyne severed ties with his long-standing agent Patrick De Koster last year after he was arrested on suspicion of money laundering, use of false documents and forgery.
Rather than employ a new agent, De Bruyne decided to conduct negotiations with Begiristain himself. De Bruyne leant on his father, Herwig, for help and used the services of two solicitors, Daan Buylaert and Sven Demeulemeester, who work for the Brussels-based law firm Altius.
They never met De Bruyne face to face during negotiations but ensured that the contract was legally sound after the player and Begiristain had agreed the terms of the deal. The two solicitors, who have taken care of the playmaker’s legal affairs since 2016, also helped De Bruyne’s father compile a file of statistics that his son used during negotiations to argue that he deserved a longer, improved contract.
“Kevin is very direct in everything,” Herwig De Bruyne told Het Laatste Nieuws, the Belgian newspaper.
“What he wants, he does. He didn’t always have the time to do everything himself. He gave us orders like ‘Look this up . . . have those figures requested.’ He analysed everything on the basis of that data.
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“He actually already knew most things. He just wanted an extra confirmation. He was well prepared. You felt that he had been working on it for a while.”
Although the deal makes De Bruyne the highest-paid player in City’s history, the club did save a considerable amount in this deal because there was no agent’s fee involved. De Bruyne’s father did not receive any commission as he is not a registered intermediary and neither are the two solicitors. The club paid out £30,174,615 in agents’ fees last year and recorded overall losses of £126 million.
De Bruyne’s father is unapologetic about the sums that his son, the Uefa midfielder of the year, earns.
“The amounts are what they are,” he said. “If your boss offers you double tomorrow, for example, you are not going to refuse that. You shouldn’t sell yourself below your price either.”
De Bruyne’s father said that City were happy with how negotiations had gone. “Txiki Begiristain congratulated me because everything had gone so well,” he said.
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“This is also an unusual situation for them. For the first time a deal with a player without anyone in between. Everything went directly through Kevin. I think this has also pleasantly surprised City.”
During negotiations for his last contract, which he signed in January 2018, City told De Bruyne that they saw him as captaincy material. Now he is primed to take the captain’s armband next season if Fernandinho leaves when his contract expires in June.
“When I came in I was a young player and now I am one of the oldest so I am trying to set the standard that they set for me and I need to maintain and explain to them how it works here because that’s very important,” De Bruyne said.
