Biggest boost to Manchester City‘s title challenge has arrived in the form of Kevin De Bruyne‘s return. The midfield maestro has been missing with a hamstring injury since August and is supposedly coming back into action this weekend versus Huddersfield.
City has missed the midfielder’s defense-ripping assists for a long time now. But what we found out has to probably be the most unexpected assist you would see in the world of football.
During his contract negotiations in 2021, De Bruyne seems to have assisted himself in getting a new and improved contract. What we mean by this is that the midfielder didn’t have any agent to set him up with a new contract but instead negotiated pretty much on his own to get a better deal.
De Bruyne had his own, very good reasons to embark upon the solo venture. During his £58 million transfer from Wolfsburg in 2015, there was a huge dispute between Kevin and those representing him.
His then-agent, Patrick de Koster, was even arrested by authorities regarding the contractual details and split from the deal.
All this had made the player and his father lose faith in the process. So this time, they turned towards data science and data analytics instead. The Belgian enlisted the services of analytics service providers providers like Analytics FC to gather the statistics around the player’s performances.
Then by applying groundbreaking data analysis tools, a context was built around the numbers to show the club how valuable the player is. The player still had a couple of years left on his previous contract.
He was advised by his father and his management company, Roc Nation, along the way too. All that, along with a couple of respected lawyers, helped De Bruyne grab the best-paying Premier League deal at the time.
Without the need of paying any commission, Kevin scored an £83 million deal that would net him around £400k a week payout for the next four years.
As things are right now, De Bruyne has helped the team win a treble and crown them world champions. So, the data wasn’t lying after all, and even City wouldn’t mind the money.
Contract negotiations are quite a complex matter, and with the number of clauses only going up with time, they are getting even harder to deal with. De Bruyne seems to have changed the negotiation game radically.
Although there is barely any data that clubs don’t have in their hands already, players are making a smart move of presenting themselves as valuable assets to the clubs using these numbers and statistics. Even Eden Hazard had negotiated his last Chelsea contract in a similar fashion.
Agents are losing their value now as players are getting aware that they can grab a bigger cut if there is no commission to be paid. Many players are even waiting for the contracts to run out so that they are even more valuable as prospects to clubs without any transfer fee attached to them.
Recently, Ilkay Gundogan, N’golo Kante, Aubameyang, etc., have tried this new tactic and bagged good personal deals. We can even see the likes of Kylian Mbappe waiting for his contract to run out. Maybe he learned from the best too.
