‘A sad day’: Pep Guardiola hails Kevin De Bruyne as one of the Premier League’s greatest | OneFootball

Pep Guardiola believes Kevin De Bruyne will be remembered as “one of the greatest” midfielders to grace the Premier League after the Belgian playmaker announced that he would leave Manchester City at the end of the season.

De Bruyne played under Guardiola for 10 seasons, winning 16 trophies including six Premier League titles and the Champions League during his decade in England.

De Bruyne’s 118 assists in the Premier League is also the second-most behind Ryan Giggs and Guardiola said the 33-year-old deserves his statue outside the Etihad, alongside modern-day legends such as Sergio Aguero and Vincent Kompany.

Guardiola said he would ‘bet a lot of money’ that De Bruyne ends up with his own statue at the Etihad (Getty Images)

"One of the greatest midfielders ever to have played in this country, and I think with Manchester City, there is no doubt," Guardiola said after De Bruyne announced his departure.

“There's no doubt he's one of the greatest for sure because of his consistency in important games, the not important games, being there every three days all the time. There is no doubt.”

De Bruyne’s final season at City has been impacted by injury but it could end on a high with the club through to the FA Cup semi-finals, where they will play Nottingham Forest.

Guardiola said he did not know if De Bruyne would feature in the first 32-team Club World Cup at the end of the season, which runs in the United States from June 13 to July 13, and the Belgian is out of contract until June 30.

The City manager called De Bruyne’s exit a ”sad day” for City and said the club would not have reached the same levels of success without him.

“He gave all of us his humility and with his influence in our success in the last decade, that would have been impossible to imagine without him,” Guardiola said.