Earlier today we covered a report from Mundo Deportivo which explained the happiness at Barcelona after Philippe Coutinho’s good start with Aston Villa.
The Catalan club never really knew what to do with the Brazilian and had been trying to get rid of him since not long after he joined from Liverpool. A loan move to Bayern Munich went pretty well but, for whatever reason, wasn’t made permanent, and there were then endless attempts to push him to the Premier League.
In the end, Aston Villa got themselves a good deal, and can make the move permanent for €40m in the summer. It’s not just Villa who are happy and feel they negotiated a good transfer, with Marca saying Barcelona executives are ‘congratulating themselves’ on business well done.
Coutinho is ‘offering the best version’ of himself under Steven Gerrard, and therefore those in charge at the Camp Nou feel their job is done, and that he won’t be returning to Barcelona.
Even if Aston Villa don’t take up their option, there’s confidence that what he’s shown already will mean another club comes in, knowing that Coutinho isn’t quite the flop of a footballer he’d been wrongly painted as.
