Kevin De Bruyne has said leaving Chelsea was "the obvious choice" and told FourFourTwo he neither knew nor cared why he had failed to convince Jose Mourinho of his worth.
Chelsea signed De Bruyne from Genk for £6.7 million in January 2012, and Mourinho brought him into the first-team squad 18 months later after a season on loan at Werder Bremen.
But after making just nine appearances for Chelsea in the first half of the 2013-14 campaign, De Bruyne joined Wolfsburg in an £18m deal in January 2014.
The Belgium international's outstanding performances for them led Manchester City to spend £55m to bring him back to the Premier League last summer.
"I've no idea and I don't care [why he never convinced Mourinho]," he said. "I waited four months, then I said to myself that wanted to play football every week.
"I couldn't get the game time I wanted, so leaving was the obvious choice.
"I wanted to start a new chapter, not be loaned out and come back to the exact same situation. It was a really smart move on my part.
"But of all the choices I have made in my career, I don't regret one of them -- even going to Chelsea. It didn't work out. I wanted to play football and I didn't, so I left."
Since joining City, De Bruyne has established himself as one of the outstanding players in the Premier League, with the arrival of Pep Guardiola seeing the 25-year-old take his game to new heights.
"It's his eye for detail that counts," De Bruyne said. "When he speaks to me, we speak about everything.
"He was a player himself so he's very good at knowing the balance of when to joke and when to be serious.
"Before a game he'll be really quiet: he does his meetings a couple of hours before the match, and then we are doing stuff on our own. By then, everybody knows what we need to do."