After a week or so of the Catalan media trying to name as many Philippe Coutinho alternatives as possible, the situation still remains pretty much the same. It’s the Liverpool star who is first choice for Barcelona, and efforts will be made to sign him in the January window.
Marca, not being of the Catalan variety, usually tend to be more sensible on the Coutinho story and that continues in their Tuesday edition. It’s stated that Coutinho’s desire to join Barcelona ‘is an open secret’ and driving Barcelona’s efforts to sign him.
It’s always nice to have a player sign who wants to play for the club so much, but that isn’t the only plus for Coutinho. He’s felt to have a great combination of age and experience, and has also played in La Liga, for Espanyol, previously. Those pluses counter against the minus of the Brazilian being cup-tied for the Champions League.
Despite all of that, Marca acknowledge the ‘great difficulty’ in getting Liverpool to agree, and assure they won’t do so for anything less than €120m, not even stating that would certainly be enough.
Unlike the Catalan press, there’s no jibes from Marca towards Liverpool and it’s stated the Premier League club ‘don’t understand’ why they should simply cave in and sell a player who is on a long contract.
