Philippe Coutinho to Barcelona was considered a transfer which worked for everyone.
Liverpool got a fee so high it seemed worth selling, Barcelona got a player they’d been chasing for a while, and the Brazilian was able to make the move he really wanted.
Since then there hasn’t really been a lot of negativity around the move. He’s not been dubbed a waste of money by the Catalan media and has slotted into his new life pretty well.
The tide may be turning.
Josep Maria Casanovas, a senior journalist for Sport newspaper, has an article on Saturday titled ‘Liverpool and Borussia do not miss Coutinho and Dembele’.
He starts with the former Liverpool player and says that for €120m plus €40m, Barcelona should have expected a ‘crack’ – the term used in Spanish to describe a truly great player.
Casanovas doesn’t think they got that, describing Coutinho as ‘just a good player’.
Perhaps too much was expected, and the article states the player ‘in no way covers the gap left by Iniesta in the centre of the pitch as had been expected in principle’.
He’s better in a more attacking role but ‘disregards too much of the defensive work’.
That Liverpool have done well without him, is another reason for Casanovas to think the price was too much, and he ends the Coutinho section by saying ‘nobody cries over his absence’ at Anfield.
Borussia Dortmund’s success this season is used to show that Dembele was overpriced, and it stings that his goals have been replaced by Paco Alcacer, who left the Catalan club.
