£145M COUTINHO

Brazilian ace is Barca-bound as Liverpool admit defeat

BARCELONA will have to pay £145million to prise Philippe Coutinho from Liverpool.

The fee would be the biggest for a player who did not have a release clause in his contract.

Neymar moved from Barcelona to Paris Saint-Germain for £198m last summer after the French giants activated the Brazilian’s release clause.

Liverpool’s squad flew out to Dubai last night for a training camp without the Brazilian playmaker.

And Barcelona are preparing the record bid — which includes guaranteed add-ons — for a player Liverpool are resigned to losing.

The deal would secure a staggering profit for the Anfield club, who bought Coutinho from Inter Milan for £8.5m in 2013.

Manager Jurgen Klopp was adamant last summer that Coutinho wouldn’t be allowed to leave

the club and rejected a number of bids which went as high as £114m. Liverpool owners Fenway Sports Group took the unusual step of releasing a statement declaring that the player would not be sold in that transfer window. However, Liverpool’s stance has now softened, with Klopp refusing to rule out Coutinho’s departure when asked about the situation this week. Liverpool spent a world-record fee for a defender recently when they signed Virgil van Dijk from Southampton for £75m but they do not need to balance the books. At Barcelona, Coutinho would not only link up with Argentina legend Lionel Messi, but also Luis Suarez, whom Liverpool sold to the five-times European champions for £75m in 2014. Suarez won the Champions League in his first season at the Nou Camp as Barcelona beat Juventus 3-1 in the final, in which the Uruguayan scored to seal a club treble. Suarez ended his first campaign with 25 goals in all competitions and, along with Messi and Neymar in the attack dubbed ‘MSN’, scored 122 goals.