One of the oddest things was Barcelona looking to replace Iniesta with Coutinho. They had a lot of skill crossover but were essentially different players functionally. Iniesta was more of a Mezzala, dictating the play, opening up space for others with his dribbling and using others as essentially static objects to bounce passes off and re-orientate the entire pitch. Personally I’ve always preferred Iniesta to Xavi.
Whilst Coutinho had some of those qualities, he was more direct than Iniesta, less of a controller, more of a wide forward or inside forward who could operate a bit deeper. To me, Coutinho was more like a post-injury Del Piero, or more contemporary, Riyadh Mahrez. I never really thought he had the same game-management or possession-dominance of Iniesta. He would have been great in the same set up, or with a different role, but I always felt that Barcelona’s own structure kind of misinterpreted their own legend’s most important features in identifying Coutinho as the replacement.
One of my absolute favourite Liverpool goals of the Klopp era was Coutinho away at Southampton.
