Martin Keown reminded Chelsea of their Kevin de Bruyne mistake with his brutal dig made after the attacking midfielder opened the scoring in Man City Champions League quarter-final tie in the Champions League.
Diego Simeone's side had held out for 69 minutes and looked a big threat to nick a goal in the second half, just as they did against Ralf Rangnick's Man United in the previous round. However, a moment of inspiration from Pep Guardiola, who had admitted to overthinking things in the Champions League at the start of the week, broke the deadlock between the two sides who now prepare to do battle in the Spanish capital. The Phil Foden sub was just the trick.
The winner of this quarter-final will play the victors of the Chelsea vs Real Madrid, so De Bruyne's strike in this one will have pricked up the ears of the Blues faithful who will bemoan Jose Mourinho's decision to sell the Belgian for a long-time yet. And Arsenal icon Martin Keown reminded the Blues fans of the big mistake made back in 2014 to allow the 30-year-old to leave for Wolfsburg where his stock went up.
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"To think that Chelsea thought he wasn't good enough. Mourinho, what does he know?" Keown said on BT Sports commentary of Man City vs Atletico Madrid. Despite the common story shared that Mourinho was the one who made this error, the now AS Roma manager offloaded that certain blunder to the higher ups at the club like Bruce Buck, Marina Granovskaia and Michael Emenalo who were all part of the board eight years ago.
Speaking on talkSPORT, Mourinho said: "My story with Kevin was fun. It worked well in the end for him. I arrived at Chelsea in my second spell and we go to Asia to play some matches and to train.
“Kevin was supposed to come with us in another group of players who would leave on loan after Asia. He impressed me so much that I made the decision: 'I don't want this kid to go out on loan, I want this kid to stay'. First match of the season we played at home against Hull and he started the first match of the Premier League. Second match we go to Old Trafford and after this, he came to me and said: 'I want to play every match, I want to play every minute'. He was supposed to go on loan and he wasn't happy to stay and grow up there.
"He by himself put a lot of pressure to leave. He wanted to go Germany where he was previously on loan and so happy in the Bundesliga. This decision was to go and he put huge pressure on that which worked very well for him and Chelsea sold him in the end. The quality of the player is amazing now. He's top five in the world.."
