Earlier this season, Manchester City midfield maestro Kevin de Bruyne announced that his time with the club was coming to an end this season. De Bruyne will leave City at the end of the season, as a free agent, which means that he can be signed without any transfer fee.
The De Bruyne sweepstakes is now on, with Chicago Fire FC making the first approach.
๐จ๐บ๐ธ EXCLUSIVE: MLS side Chicago Fire make approach to sign Kevin De Bruyne on a free transfer.
De Bruyne will assess all options in the next days and weeks, but Chicago Fire are now showing strong interest with a specific project to attract KDB.
Deal on. pic.twitter.com/RUQSvZ0zh4
โ Fabrizio Romano (@FabrizioRomano) April 16, 2025
Manchester City at Everton FC FYIs
Kickoff: Sat April 20, 3pm, Goodison Park, Liverpool, UK
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Premier League Standing: Manchester City 5th, 55 pts, Everton FC 13th, 38 points
As you can see from the tweet via the world’s foremost football transfer expert, Fabrizio Romano, talks have already begun. The 33-year-old Belgian makes $27.5 million per season at City, so he won’t come cheap.
He will obviously take a massive pay cut to play in Major League Soccer, but he could still become the highest paid player in the league, not named Lionel Messi.
Which is understandable given how the Messi phenomenon and Messi effect is a completely different animal.
The Fire are one of few MLS clubs with the ambition and resources to get De Bruyne. The most recent example of this was Xherdan Shaqiri, who was the highest paid MLS player until Messi came along.
While Shaq flopped, massively, De Bruyne is an entirely different player.
While he’s obviously dropped in level the past couple years, with injuries and age taking their collective toll, he was still the best midfielder alive not that long ago.
Seriously, when Erling Haaland first arrived at City in the summer of 2022, one of the leading storylines was how he would link up with De Bruyne to create a potentially lethal combination.
De Bruyne is a much better service provider, even now, than Shaqiri ever was, even in his prime.
And if you can pair up De Bruyne with Hugo Cuypers, a leading candidate for the MLS Golden Boot, you could truly have something special.
The best analogy to De Bruyne joining the Fire is Bastian Schweinsteiger. Remember when Schweini was paired up with striker Nemanja Nikolic?
It resulted in Niko winning the 2017 MLS Golden Boot award, part of what was a very special season for the club.
That summer saw the Fire host the MLS All-Star Game, during a campaign in which they secured a playoff berth (still today, their most recent postseason appearance).
It it not a stretch to foresee a De Bruyne-Cuypers partnership re-creating what we saw with Basti and Nikolic.
Plus De Bruyne is a guy who fits Berhalter’s system perfectly. And the timing is right for both sides. De Bruyne already kicked the tires on a possible move to Saudi Arabia, last summer, but elected to stay put.
It’s highly unlikely he looks at making the switch to the Saudi Pro League this time around. Also, the Berhalter turnaround is already starting to take shape.
The first green shoots of growth within the club have clearly been visible in the early part of this season.
Now if they add De Bruyne in the summer (they will have a Designated Player slot open, if they want to, to make it happen) they can all go next level.
Paul M. Banks is the Founding Editor of The Sports Bank. Heโs also the author of โTransatlantic Passage: How the English Premier League Redefined Soccer in America,โ and โNo, I Canโt Get You Free Tickets: Lessons Learned From a Life in the Sports Media Industry.โ
He currently contributes to USA Todayโs NFL Wires Network. His past bylines include the New York Daily News, Sports Illustrated and the Chicago Tribune. His work has been featured in numerous outlets, including the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, the Washington Post and ESPN. You can follow him on Linked In and Twitter.
