De Bruyne: When I was 14, I left my parents to join Genk training center. The first year I ended up in a large boarding school, where you sleep with everyone.
Fortunately, the second year, I was with a host family. But, things didn’t go as planned. I’m someone who is fine on my own, I’m kind of shy. I thought everything was fine, at the end of the year, everything was going well.
My foster parents never had to go to school for problems, academic or disciplinary. I said goodbye to them without knowing what was going to happen.
Then one day I come home and my parents were sad, they were crying, I asked, ‘what’s wrong?’, And there they told me that my host family didn’t want more of me. I asked them why and they said it was ‘because of who you are’. I did not understand. ‘You are difficult to pin down, you are very calm. You have trouble interacting with the other children. They just find you difficult ‘.
It’s not nice to hear that when you’re 15 or 16. That day, I kicked the ball against a wall for hours. I told myself that everything was going to be fine, and that in a few months I would be in the first team and that I would no longer experience failure.
As I came back after the summer, I was in the B team and I told my parents that in two months I will be in the first team. I trained like crazy, I had fire in me. It was as if I had gone mad. I remember we were playing on a Friday night, I was a substitute. I came on in the second half and I scored five goals. That day changed my history in the club and I joined the first team.
