Kevin de Bruyne has always spoken about football in a refreshingly direct way.



Partly because he won’t entertain any ideas the media might like to focus on, such as the importance of being one of the first teams to play against Tottenham Hotspur at their new stadium back in April.



“I don’t care about the stadium,” he said. “I care about the team we play. Everybody talks about the stadium like it’s something special. Everybody has a stadium. Everybody has supporters.”



He can be so abrupt that he’s been nicknamed “the tumble dryer” by friends, but it is the way he uses that to discuss the finer points of the game that suggests he might be especially good at making that difficult transition from player to manager.



With Mikel Arteta being talked up as a potential candidate to take over at Arsenal, partly because of his standing as an ex-player and partly because of the way he has been able to...