Manchester City's Kevin De Bruyne: Mohamed Salah and I have shown Jose Mourinho our strengths

Interview: The Manchester City midfielder has had to negotiate many questions about one Jose Mourinho over the course of his career

The Belgian has been outstanding for City this season (Getty)

“I really don’t care. Honestly, I really don’t care,” insists Kevin de Bruyne, this Premier League season’s most outstanding player and perhaps also its least vindictive.

The Manchester City midfielder has had to negotiate many questions about one Jose Mourinho over the course of his career and beneath the open, patient and equitable way in which he always responds, there must be some temptation to provide a final answer, if only to stop the probing once and for all.

This weekend’s Manchester derby would appear to be the perfect opportunity to do just that. Victory over a Mourinho-managed Manchester United on Saturday will see City crowned as Premier League champions.

Claiming the title would also fully and finally justify De Bruyne’s conviction back in the winter of 2013 that in order to fulfill his immense potential, he had to part ways with his old manager.

The Belgian, however, sees things differently. Winning his first English top-flight title will be special, no matter who is in the opposition dugout.

“It’s just part of football,” he says of this fifth reunion with Mourinho, four years after being sidelined by him at Chelsea. “It goes up and down. My seasons in the 10 years I’ve been playing, nine-and-a-half years have been up and a half year has been a bit down.

“That was an experience where I learned maybe the most out of how football goes, how I go with the situation. I was only like 21 at the time – no one is going to play all the time at that age. If I see the amount of games I’ve played in my career it’s a lot, so I’m happy.”

It seems the final answer on De Bruyne and Mourinho’s relationship that us journalists and other interested observers want may merely be that this even-tempered player bears no grudge against a manager who could not find a place for his talents.

The same might be true of the equally mild-mannered Mohamed Salah, another to leave Stamford Bridge under a cloud having failed to convince Mourinho. The free-scoring Liverpool winger is now De Bruyne’s only rival for this season’s PFA Player of the Year award.

Does it not reflect poorly on one of world’s leading coaches that two players he effectively wrote off are now the top flight’s two outstanding performers?

“I think it shows Salah and my strength,” De Bruyne says. “If somebody comes up to you and it’s not enough, and you make a decision to go to play football and you have confidence in yourself that you can do well, as long as you’re physically and mentally right to do it, you can make it either way.”

Yet De Bruyne also concedes that had he and Salah not left Chelsea when they did, or indeed if they were still working under Mourinho today, they may not be currently playing at the same, exceptional level.

“Obviously everyone needs to find a system and playing style that suits you more. Probably now we’ve found somebody who suits us both more than it was before,” he admits. “I think in both our cases that’s true. But that’s the same for a lot of players.

“I think it’s just because it’s the same manager and it’s both of us in the same season who are going well that people are talking about it, but I think every manager will have had a lot of players who were not suited with each other who went away and did well afterwards.

“Maybe a lot of people are picking up on it now, today, but I’m not really that type of person who thinks about that. It’s just the way it goes, in life, in football.”

De Bruyne has little reason to dwell on the past though, particularly this weekend, which he hopes will be about celebrating City’s present.

Pep Guardiola’s side will not only confirm their status as champions with victory on Saturday, but will also become the earliest title-winners in Premier League history, and it is just one of several records they can break over the coming weeks. The points record, the wins record and the record for the largest winning margin are all within their sights too.

“I think the goal is to win everything,” De Bruyne says. “Whatever we can reach is nice to take.” But there is a warning, too. “I can imagine if we win the title some people will switch off. It’s possible. We don’t know. I would like to win every game but I can’t speak for other guys, maybe mentally they go down.

There is also, perhaps surprisingly, sympathy for the chasing pack.

“I don’t think Man United did bad,” De Bruyne says. “I think we did really well this season. We’ve only lost like 9 points in the season, that almost never happens so I think if we have a good season, a normal season, the title would be much closer because the teams up there have a lot of points.

“They can reach the mid 80s, United the high 80s, that’s a lot of points in a season. I think they did really well but I think also a lot of people have criticised them because they’re comparing them to us this season and that makes it more difficult for them.”

The overall sense is that despite City’s dominance this year, their star player is wary of a backlash.

“Chelsea had 93 points last year and that’s almost history,” De Bruyne notes. “Is it 95 the most? That’s so close. Now they have more problems so it can change so quickly. You have to be aware it can change quickly in football so you have to try to maintain it.

“You’ve always six teams who are trying to win the title and the other five have failed. But by word of saying it it’s not failing, it’s just the way it is. The last two years we didn’t win it so it wasn’t good enough, but if now we win it the other teams will say the same.”

And yet a fear of reprisals will not deter De Bruyne and his team-mates from revelling in their title win once it is confirmed, even if that confirmation comes on Saturday, with their nearest challengers sat defeated in the next room.

Mourinho complained about the noise made by City’s post-match celebrations after their 2-1 win at Old Trafford in December and his intervention infamously resulted in confrontations between players and staff from both clubs.

Will the decibel level be lower this weekend? “The volume is always up,” De Bruyne says.

“It's our way to prepare for games, the music is on before the game and after, so it's not like because we won we're going to change it, it's just because it's the thing we do, it's the thing that gets us relaxed, maybe.

“Some teams don't do music, but a lot of teams I've played in have played music, and obviously the dressing-rooms are mostly close to each other, but it's not to mock anybody.

“You have to take it up, you know,” he adds. “We put music on for us, not to do anything bad to other people. It's our thing to relax and have fun, and if people take it that it's bad for [towards] them, then I'm sorry, but it's just for us.”