How Good Was PRIME Kevin de Bruyne?

Kevin De Bruyne has the strangest kind of fame in football. Everyone calls him world-class. Nobody will finish the sentence. Best midfielder of his era? Sure. Best midfielder in Premier League history? Now it's a debate. Best Premier League player ever, any position, any era? Nobody even builds that sentence. So I built it. Every asterisk, every "yeah, but", every argument against him, on the table, checked against the data. And every single one turns into an argument for him. ── THE NUMBERS ── • Fastest to 100 Premier League assists - 237 games (Fàbregas needed 293) • Best minutes-per-assist rate in Premier League history - 177 (Bergkamp 236) • 1,160 chances created since 2015 - 191 more than anyone else in Europe's top 5 • 171 league assists by age 32 - Kroos 103, Modrić 83 over the same careers • 43 goal involvements in 76 league games against the "big six" • 36 league goals from outside the box, worth just 2.71 xG - +33 over expected • 20 assists in 2019/20, equalling Thierry Henry's all-time season record • Bundesliga Player of the Year at Wolfsburg - 2nd in the table, behind Pep's Bayern ── SOURCES ── Every figure in this video is checked and on-screen sourced. Career data pulled from FBref and Understat. Records and club history from premierleague.com, mancity.com and Opta. Kevin's account of Genk and Chelsea is from his own Players' Tribune essay. Where two providers disagree, the video shows the number it can defend and names the source on screen. If you spot something wrong, tell me in the comments and I'll pin the correction. ── ABOUT VERDICT ── Football arguments, settled with data and the eye test. No hot takes, no filler, no stock footage of things that aren't the thing I'm talking about. Subscribe if you want the next one. #KevinDeBruyne #PremierLeague #ManCity