Chelsea's Kevin De Bruyne upsets Germans by calling them 'stiff'

• De Bruyne on season-long loan at Werder Bremen
• Midfielder tweets that quotes were mistranslated

by Marcus Christenson 7 months ago

Chelsea's Kevin De Bruyne has caused a stir in Germany, where he is on loan at Werder Bremen, by calling Germans "stiff" and saying that he does not like their mentality.

Chelsea signed the 21-year-old from Genk last summer but was loaned out to Bremen immediately. However, Bremen have endured a terrible start to the season and, in an interview with Het Nieuwsblad, the midfielder made it clear he is unlikely to remain in Germany after his loan deal expires.

"I miss the warmth and atmosphere in Genk," he said according to German paper Bild. "The Germans are stiffer. Their mentality is not for me. If Werder is a family then it is only for the people from here.

"I was doing German lessons with the club but I stopped doing them. I didn't like it. If I am honest I wouldn't want to live in Germany in the future."

Bremen have won only two of their first seven Bundesliga games and were defeated 3-1 by Augsburg at the weekend. De Bruyne has started every league game and scored three goals and said that he does not have a problem with the manager, Thomas Schaaf.

"The manager is OK but we don't really speak. It is quite simple: He hasn't come to me and I haven't gone to him."

On Monday, the midfielder took to Twitter to say that the interview had been mistranslated, writing: "To everyone who reads German papers: the interview that has been published about me is a translation of a Belgian interview," he wrote.

"In the translating process, some things obviously went wrong. I really am happy in Bremen and I'm fully adapting to the German mentality."