AS KEVIN De Bruyne stands on the edge of a historic treble with Manchester City, one of the greatest midfielders in world football has Swindon Town Football Club to thank for his dream career.

Or that’s how the story goes around here.

“He was supposed to be a future star at Chelsea under Jose Mourinho, but he played like sh*t against us in a League Cup game back in 2013,” so one might say when talking to a half-interested mate down the pub.

“I’m guessing Chelsea won?”

“Yeah, they beat us 2-0, but *he* was crap, so we laughed him off the pitch when he was subbed late on,” you shrug.

“Didn’t he come back with City in the FA Cup recently and help them wipe the floor with you?”

After shooting said friend a dirty look, you say: “We still scored. Anyway, Jose didn’t fancy him after that League Cup game, and he got shipped off to Germany a few months later.

“Away from the intense limelight of English football, he completely reinvented himself and came back a megastar where ultra-rich Man City bought him to run their midfield for the next 10 years. Without him in there, they wouldn’t have won half as much!

“Five Premier League titles, two FA Cups, four League Cups, and a hatful of personal awards. All that happened because he couldn’t do it on a cold night in Swindon…the first time. Whose round is it?”

If stories from us Town fans with a selective memory don’t convince you, by the player’s own admissions, that night in 2013 was genuinely the symbolic end of De Bruyne’s nine-game Chelsea career.

In a fascinating interview with The Players’ Tribune from 2019, De Bruyne confessed: “When I got another chance to play, against Swindon Town in the [League] Cup, I wasn’t in good shape. And then that was pretty much it for me.”

Just a couple of months later, off De Bruyne went to VFL Wolfsburg in Germany where – with the jeers of 10,000 unimpressed Swindon fans undoubtedly still eating away at the Belgian – he rebuilt his career by scoring 20 goals and providing 37 assists in 72 matches.

Ignoring the plethora of rejections he had received as a youngster and obviously driven on specifically by a desire to show the people of a small town in Wiltshire how wrong they were, the now-31-year-old had put himself in the shop window for the giants of European football by being named Bundesliga Player of the Season for 2015-16.

When a three-way tug of war between Paris St Germain, Bayern Munich, and Manchester City developed that summer, the latter triumphed and landed a man who has helped fuel the Mancunians’ unquenchable thirst for silverware ever since. A man who is four goals shy of 100 after just 355 appearances in sky blue. Not to mention, he has 152 assists to boot. Nearly as good as Don Rogers.

In English football, only Manchester United have ever won a treble, but with De Bruyne on hand to provide ammunition for the irrepressible Erling Haaland – who, by the way, is yet to prove he can do it on a cold night against Swindon – the Citizens are just one game away from pulling alongside their arch-rivals.

Should City beat Inter Milan in the Champions League final over in Istanbul on Saturday night, adding to this season’s FA Cup and Premier League crown, I would imagine the first thing De Bruyne will think is: “thank God for Swindon Town.”

You’re welcome, Kevin.