Erling Haaland, the man with whom he has wreaked so much destruction this season, was the first over to commiserate him. An arm around the shoulder, a pat on the chest, a couple of quiet words in his ear. A few moments later, Ilkay Gundogan, Manchester City’s captain, came over to console his midfield partner. Then Nathan Ake. The same.
They didn’t need Kevin De Bruyne to say anything. They just knew. The painful look etched large on his face as he made that long, lonely walk off was enough and said more than words ever could: the anguish, the disappointment, the heartbreak, the knowledge of another Champions League final cut cruelly short before he had been able to leave an imprint.
By the time De Bruyne finally took a seat on the City bench and applied a huge ice pack to a hamstring, the Belgium midfielder looked like he wanted the ground to swallow him up. ‘Why Always Me?’ to borrow that line from Mario Balotelli, one of several former City players at the Ataturk Stadium on Saturday night.
Two years ago, in Porto, De Bruyne lasted just an hour of the final against Chelsea, flattened by a cynical Antonio Rudiger, who had stood his ground and allowed City’s No. 17 to run at full force into his body check. De Bruyne left the field concussed with a fractured eye-socket and nose. Dazed and confused, the only saving grace at the time was he did not seem to know too much about it. By contrast, the physical pain and injury may not have been nearly as severe this time around but there was absolute clarity about what was unfolding and, in many ways, that mental torture probably felt as acute as anything.
There were only 35 minutes on the clock when De Bruyne raised a hand to signal his race was run, a crushing sight for anyone of a City persuasion and the moment Pep Guardiola knew that, if this particular Champions League itch was going to be scratched, it would have to be done so without his midfield talisman.
De Bruyne had just misplaced another cross, so uncharacteristically for one of the game’s most precise passers of the ball, and knew that was it. Five minutes earlier, he had gone to ground, clutching his leg, head bowed, crestfallen. City fans felt the knot in their stomachs tighten.
He tried to struggle on but it was no good. This was not an injury he was going to run off. When a pass intended for Jack Grealish rolled out for an Inter Milan goal kick, De Bruyne put his hands in his face. It was as if he wanted to cry. And others probably wanted to cry for him.
City may not be everyone’s cup of tea. In fact, there are those who openly disdain the club, what with that overturned Uefa ban, those 115 charges (accusations the club strenuously deny) and all that money. But De Bruyne is a player who is hard not to love, whatever your allegiance. He plays football in a way we all wish we could, picks passes that seem to defy physics and does it all while carrying the ruddied complexion of a park player blowing out of his backside after 10 minutes on a Sunday, the morning after the night before.
So seeing him reduced by injury, unable to run and roam like he so loves on the biggest club stage of them all was a great shame. De Bruyne has tried to talk down the importance of winning the Champions League and insisted that a single game will not define a career that is pushing close to 700 games for club and country, in contrast to Guardiola who has given up pretending it will not determine how people regard his side.
But it never really washed. Watching him bust a gut in that stunning semi-final, second leg victory over Real Madrid at the Etihad Stadium, when for a moment in the second half it looked like he had even blown himself out, it was clear the competition means so much to him. The best players make their mark when the stakes are at their highest and De Bruyne, as much as he may play the role of reluctant superstar, wanted to be that person as much as anyone.
For a player accustomed to bending games to his will, watching this game carry on without him, unable to influence it any longer, must have been agony, all the more so given what happened two years ago in Portugal. Instead, he had to watch Phil Foden, on in his place, and others trying to find a way past Inter’s stubborn resistance. The joy then when Rodri crashed home the sort of precise finish of which De Bruyne would have been proud as the game just entered its final quarter was unbridled.
Whatever pain his heavily strapped right hamstring was causing him seemed to be forgotten in that moment the ball hit the net and De Bruyne was up off the bench, running towards the touchline before enjoying the warmest of embrace with some of his fellow substitutes.
Nothing lightens the mood quite like a goal in your favour, particularly one as big as this, and before long De Bruyne was back off the bench barking instructions in the shadow of Guardiola, Cristiano Ronaldo Euro 2016 style.
Anything, anything to help his team get over the line and ensure his own personal torment played second fiddle to Champions League glory, and with, the Treble.
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