Andrés Iniesta’s successor was always going to cost a hefty wedge. Barcelona certainly tried not to pay it — even as they were reportedly in the process of handing out close to £100m (guaranteed) to Borussia Dortmund for a mere teenager as part of August’s £135m deal for Ousmane Dembele, they were clearly putting in one hell of a shift to try and short-change Liverpool on the proposed transfer of Iniesta’s would-be replacement, Philippe Coutinho. In the intervening months, a mooted £118m deal (£82m over 4 years and £36m laughably based on Champions League and Ballon d’Or victories) has apparently become £142m (with £105m supposedly arriving upfront and the rest dependent on a more realistic set of milestones). And so they’ve finally landed their man.
It certainly wasn’t a cheap piece of business (Coutinho becomes the second-most expensive transfer of all-time), but no one can accuse Barcelona of not trying to get him for less than his worth in a market they themselves helped to inflate (he’s certainly worth more than the inexperienced Dembele, for example). Then again, replacing one of the greatest players of his generation was never likely to be easy on the Nou Camp coffers — talent like that comes at a premium unless a club can develop it in-house, and La Masia has had about as much success producing the next Iniesta as Liverpool’s Academy has had unearthing another Steven Gerrard.
This is the man whose boots Coutinho will now attempt to fill, having burned the bridge so spectacularly on his way out of Merseyside that Jürgen Klopp’s subsequent characterisation of him as “a wonderful person” must surely have been typed through the written-word equivalent of gritted teeth. In fact the Liverpool manager’s entire
statement on the matter feels surreal and, so riddled is it with context and excuses for Coutinho’s behaviour over the past five months or so, the reader would be forgiven for thinking that it was drafted by the Brazilian himself. If the words are indeed Klopp’s, then their formulation must surely have involved an extraordinary level of self-control and are indicative either of a man with the patience of a saint or, perhaps more likely, one putting the club’s interests before his own.
After all, with Coutinho having so publicly acted out (like a child, some might say) to try and engineer this move in August (commencing with the toy-throwing a mere 9 days before the start of Liverpool’s season, upon Neymar’s move to PSG) and Emre Can’s imminent departure to Juventus rumoured to be at least partially over the absence of a buyout clause in any proposed new deal, there may be an element involved in the manager’s statement of trying to reassure any prospective world-class talents who may want to use the club as a stepping-stone in the future — you know, arrive at Anfield, spend 3 or 4 years improving under a world-class coach, then move on for a massive fee to Barcelona, Real Madrid or PSG. If the club gets the reputation for allowing trifling matters like a contract to get in the way of such plans, or matching brattish behaviour with a well-deserved kick up the arse on the way out, then promising players and their agents might choose a different club to be the incubator of their talent in the future. To be fair, it’s a serious consideration for the club.
In any case the Liverpool boss, whether he wrote the words himself or merely added his name to them, spectacularly misses the point in one sense when he states that “it is totally understandable that supporters will be disappointed; this is always the case when you have to say goodbye to someone special” and that “as hard as it is sometimes to accept, it is part of life and part of football — individuals have their own dreams and their own goals and objectives in life.” To be clear, the source of this particular (bitter) disappointment is absolutely
not the fact that Coutinho is leaving, rather it’s about: (a)
when he’s leaving, and (b) the fact that the club has allowed it to happen
now, halfway through a season that still promises so much. The inference that we’re simply upset at losing one of our favourites for reasons we don’t fully understand veers dangerously towards patronising.
From the moment that infamous back “injury” struck prior to the first fixture of the season at Watford, it was clear to all but the most optimistic of us that this was going to be the Brazilian’s last season at the club. That much has long been accepted by the majority of the fanbase, I would argue. The extent to which we wanted him to stay no longer mattered quite as much once we recognised that he had very clearly made his mind up and wasn’t about to change it, any more than Luis Suárez did after securing Champions League qualification and winning the PFA Players’ Player of the Year in 2014. None of us wanted blood; all we wanted, I would suggest, was what the Uruguayan gave us on his way out — the season of his life — and had Coutinho stayed and contributed to the
entirety of the club’s 2017/18 campaign then I sincerely doubt that many of us would have begrudged him his dream move in the summer.
That’s not possible now, of course. Coutinho’s contribution (when he’s played) has undoubtedly been impressive this season, and his per-minute goals/assists average is reportedly better even than Mo Salah’s (who really
is having the season of his life). None of it matters now. Having started the campaign missing both legs of Liverpool’s monumentally important Champions League qualifier against Hoffenheim, as well as the club’s opening 4 League fixtures, with an injury every bit as convenient and dubious in nature as the thigh problem that “forced” him to miss nearly half of Liverpool’s congested Christmas period (that it has now apparently ruled him out for his first 3 weeks as a Barcelona player merely underlines, as I saw someone put it on Twitter today, a level of “commitment to a role Daniel Day Lewis would envy”), the Brazilian now leaves with 16 games of the Premier League season remaining (and just 8 points separating 2nd to 6th) and the club’s first Champions League knockout fixture in almost 9 years upcoming in mid-February.
If his performances between September and December made up for his behaviour in August, then he has surely now forfeited any right to be associated with anything his former club achieves over the remainder of this campaign. The fear, of course, is that his absence may take a realistic shot at, say, 2nd place in the League (thus avoiding the necessity of a Champions League qualifier in the early weeks of 2018/19), a Champions League quarter- (or even semi-) final this season and perhaps an FA Cup win, and turn it into 5th place, Europa League qualification, and limp exits to Porto and West Brom (or whoever) in the Champions League and FA Cup respectively.
So with all due respect to the manager, and taking his words at face value, I don’t think he
does understand the nature of our disappointment. This notion that “there is nothing left at our disposal to change his mind” is fine in the longer term, but in the short-term it ignores the twin factors of a contract and a World Cup at the end of the season. Regardless of how well or badly Coutinho played over the next 5 months, whether it was in the first-team or the U-23’s, or if he never played at all, Barcelona would still have had to pay a premium for that level of talent next summer and, in the meantime, the prospect of playing a crucial role in Brazil’s assault on the World Cup in June would have surely once again focused his mind into contributing towards the remainder of Liverpool’s season.
I’ll leave others to debate the transfer business that Liverpool may yet conduct in January, but the club is instead now left with a very conspicuous £100m in its pocket and the choice of either leaving a creative void in the team (hands-up if you think Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain is going to fill it adequately — anyone?) or spending heavily on a replacement who, even if he knows the league (e.g. Mahrez), is unlikely to be up to speed as regards the unique demands of Klopp’s system before the end of the season, or who may be cup-tied for the remainder of the Champions League campaign (e.g. Lemar, Pulisic), and who doesn’t necessarily fit into Coutinho’s role in the team anyway (all three, arguably). So under the circumstances, it isn’t too difficult to envisage this piece of business severely hurting the club’s interests in the short-term.
That’s where the disappointment lies. As regards the “dreams” and “goals and objectives in life” that players may have, this is not our first rodeo. Kevin Keegan (Hamburg) had them, as did Graeme Souness (Sampdoria) and Ian Rush (Juventus). Steve McManaman and Michael Owen (both Real Madrid) did too. Ditto Xabi Alonso (Real again), Javier Mascherano (Barcelona), Fernando Torres (Chelsea) and Suárez (Barcelona). They all had dreams, goals and objectives in life that led them away from Anfield, never to return (with the exceptions of Rush and, regrettably as it turned out, Souness). Steven Gerrard had them too, and they almost led him to Chelsea.
Well Liverpool supporters have theirs too, and it’s
those dreams, goals and objectives which should forever be foremost in the manager’s mind because they’re intrinsically linked to those of Jürgen Klopp himself, consisting as they do only of what benefits
this club. Conversely, we’re not Barcelona supporters so Philippe Coutinho has one less life objective in common with us than he previously did — he still wants to win, just not for Liverpool. Whatever he wishes to achieve therefore means nothing to us. He doesn’t seem to care about our “dreams” — so why on earth should any of us care about his?
The thing is, Keegan and Souness signed off with a European Cup (in 1977 and 1984 respectively), the former confirming a 3-1 victory in Rome by blazing his way past a World Cup-winner and leaving him with little choice but to haul him down in the box, the latter bossing both the home side and their volatile support in the same venue and on the same occasion 7 years later. And Alonso and Suárez both almost delivered League titles during their final seasons (2008/09 and 2013/14 respectively) on their way to turning in what were undoubtedly their best campaigns for the club on their way to Real Madrid and Barcelona respectively.
The others listed above perhaps didn’t cover themselves in glory on the way out, to varying degrees — Torres had a nasty dig upon joining Chelsea, McManaman and Owen allowed their contracts to run down, Mascherano was rumoured to have refused to play away to Manchester City — but Coutinho becomes the first of them to leave
in the middle of a season. That truly puts him in a league of his own, a place which has nothing to do with his performances in a red shirt. Had he stayed for another few months, the end of his time with Liverpool may not have proven to be a glorious Keegan-esque exit, it may not have taken place on club football’s biggest night in the NSC Olimpiyskiy Stadium in Kiev next May, but it
could have conceivably concluded at Wembley in front of 90,000 with the end of a trophy drought stretching back to 2012 and the club safely ensconced in the group stages of the 2018/19 Champions League.
Instead, he has summarily turned his nose up at the prospect of achieving anything for this great club. So under the circumstances, I hope I’ll be forgiven if I don’t exactly send him my best regards, although I’ll certainly appreciate it if he has the integrity and taste
not to send a goodbye letter to the supporters damning the club with faint praise, reiterating the sentiments of Klopp’s statement (as if we care) and taking the words “You’ll Never Walk Alone” in vain. We’re not stupid — we know that Barcelona is a vastly more successful club than Liverpool and that he’ll win more trophies there (hey, he’ll pick up a League winners’ medal this season just by showing his face). It’s been that way for 30 years or more, no need to patronise, we know why he’s leaving. If honesty and realism is what we’re going for, though, then leaving in January is what the Americans might call a “dick move”, and that, my friends, is as real as it gets.
However, if you’re a bit more charitable than me then please, by all means, wish the lad luck. Wish him all the luck in the world, because he’s going to need it. I mentioned earlier that he’s likely to be Andrés Iniesta’s replacement at Barcelona. Iniesta (who turns 34 in May) is an all-time great by any measure, a player who has delivered virtual perfection throughout his illustrious career, undoubtedly helped by the talent around him but whose most memorable interventions were his alone and were made when the stakes and the pressure were at their highest — the ice-cold finishes in injury-time at Stamford Bridge in 2009 and during extra-time in Johannesburg just over a year later spring readily to mind. A key part of what are widely-held to be two of the greatest football teams of all time (Barcelona 2009-2011 and Spain 2008-2012), he has never just been an individual but has actively improved the players around him and his talent has above all been consistently underlined by a metronomic level of dependability.
I’m not a subscriber to the frankly ludicrous beliefs expressed by Souness about Coutinho back in August (“Is he that good? For that sort of money you want a player that is a game-changer, the difference in big games, and I don’t see him as that...Does he turn up in the real big games?). Coutinho absolutely
did “turn up” in many big games for Liverpool over the years (not the Europa League final in 2016, mind) — the winner in the crucial 3-2 League victory over Manchester City in April 2014 that could have been a title decider, the opener in the FA Cup semi-final in 2015, the equaliser in the 2016 League Cup final that sent the game to extra-time, the crucial goal at Old Trafford in the Europa League the same season, the second against Dortmund a few weeks later that lifted heads again after Reus had made it 1-3.
However, and this is not a knock on Liverpool F.C., “big games” for Barcelona are a very different beast. Whether the 3-2 against City, or a League Cup final against the same opposition, or a Europa League tie against Manchester United or Borussia Dortmund, many of these games have either been in secondary competitions (League Cup, Europa League) or were fixtures that Liverpool did not approach with the absolute certainty of winning that Barcelona regularly have, with all the pressure that comes along with it. Liverpool haven’t won a trophy since 2012, haven’t played in the knockout stages of the Champions League since 2009, haven’t won a League title since before Coutinho was
born — Barcelona won the treble as recently as 2015, a domestic double as recently as 2016.
It’s hard not to admire his ambition on some level, but he’s filling massive shoes and he’ll be expected to produce results with them every single time he plays. I loved him, I thought he was brilliant, but for a large portion of his time at Anfield (and before that at Inter) he came across as a timid young man whose ability to influence games on a consistent basis only really began to flourish once Jürgen Klopp arrived and built a team around him, eventually moving him into the position he’ll ultimately be expected to fill with Barcelona. It remains to be seen whether a little over 2 years of being that kind of player has given him a sufficient grounding in how to consistently influence games and handle the immense pressure that he’ll experience at the Nou Camp, but one thing is for sure — Barcelona weren’t sniffing around the player when he was struggling to turn Liverpool’s disappointing season around under Brendan Rodgers in 2014/15.
That’s why, despite the outward magnanimity, this has to be a bitter pill for the manager to swallow. Mario Götze, another young player who benefitted from Klopp’s guidance in his early-twenties, at least stayed and helped Dortmund to a Champions League final in 2013 before departing for Bayern. Of course, Coutinho’s improvement as a player under Klopp doesn’t mean that Liverpool “own” him in perpetuity, and he could certainly make the case that he has repaid both the club and the manager with his performances. But to leave in the middle of a campaign, having already tried to do so mere days before the start of the season, represents nothing less than a slap in the face to his former boss and a middle finger to everything he’s trying to achieve here.
Coutinho leaves as a footnote in Liverpool’s history, a mere hint of what could have been. Klopp once said the following of Shinji Kagawa, another for whom the grass was greener after enjoying splendid success under the German in his early twenties, who found himself struggling at Manchester United: “My heart breaks. Really, I have tears in my eyes”. If Coutinho’s time at Barcelona turns out similar, with the player perhaps sinking without a trace like Götze did at Bayern or Kagawa did at Old Trafford (unlikely to be fair), Jürgen might well be moved to shed a tear once again. He’ll likely be the only one crying around these parts.
