Coutinho and Sanchez show different sides of same game
Contrasting results as clubs keep players who want to leave
AS Jurgen Klopp is fond of saying at the club he has been in charge at now for two years and two months, “Liverpool is not a prison”, and as a manager whose career in Germany was punctuated by high-profile departures to their biggest rival, he is aware of the futility of keeping unhappy players.
But, in the summer, there was no question that Liverpool had a very unhappy player, indeed, in Philippe Coutinho, the man for whom Barcelona were eventually prepared to pay £115 million, and who was very much of the mind that this was his destiny.
That he did not leave, or that Liverpool felt compelled to keep him rather than sell him, was a decision that came with its own considerable risk but has been vindicated four months on. You could say that Liverpool knew what they were dealing with in Coutinho, a footballer who could be relied upon to accept that there were considerations above his own and, that having signed a five-year contract last January, he was not in a position to impose his will on the club.
It is always a strange kind of calculation in these situations, backing a footballer with a grievance to play like a man without one, and it comes down to a simple assessment of character.
Tomorrow, Coutinho will line up for Liverpool against Arsenal at the Emirates, having not changed his mind about Barcelona – he still wants to go, and they still want to sign him – but having come back from injury in mid-October, he has looked, by and large, like the Coutinho of last season. The goals might be celebrated with a little more edge, the demeanour a little more taciturn but when he directs a ball inside a goalkeeper’s post with just the breadth of a credit card to spare, there is no questioning the quality of service.
The calculation has paid off for Liverpool, a summer of debate in the club took care to allow no friction to develop between Coutinho, Klopp, and the player’s agent, Kia Joorabchian. It was awkward at times, and difficult for Klopp to handle in public when the player’s silence on the matter spoke volumes, yet it never became personal, which meant that when he was fit again, Coutinho went straight back into the team.
LEGAL
At Arsenal, four months on from the summer of Alexis Sanchez, which finished with Manchester City’s medical and legal departments dispatched to do a last-minute deal in Chile where they waited to be activated like a cell of CIA assets, the picture is less clear. Perhaps tomorrow will be the night when Sanchez decides to cast off the general mood of indifference that has so often gripped him this season, with a few exceptions, and perform like the kind of player he clearly thinks he is.
The attitude of Arsenal towards a man who saw no future at their club was different, making the signing of Thomas Lemar from Monaco a condition of his departure to City and then pulling the plug when they saw no prospect of getting their replacement. There was a logic to making sure that they had an alternative, but what of the more complex factors, such as how Sanchez might react to the breakdown of a transfer, and to staying at a club where he had no intention of re-signing?
If Liverpool could be sure of Coutinho’s honesty of effort, then Arsenal could never be certain when it came to Sanchez, a figure who manages to look perpetually dissatisfied at what might be on offer. And what has been on offer at Arsenal over the years? Only the biggest contract in the club’s history and the unstinting devotion of a fan base desperate to rally behind a transformative figure on the pitch.
Hindsight is not really necessary in the case of Sanchez, whose reaction to drifting into the last year of his contract has scarcely come as a surprise. Substituted against West Ham, you might say it simply adds to the frustration when he magically turns on a performance against, for instance, Tottenham Hotspur, only then to turn it off later.
Put bluntly, if this is a man of many moods, then giving him reason to pick the blackest is not the obvious option to take.
He may yet choose that tomorrow night is the time when he will re-emerge once more as the player who can save Arsenal, but even if he does, he has only 19 league games after then in which to do so. In the meantime, City seem to be coping without him and whether they would risk the distraction from their season so far by signing him next month is, at the very least, debatable.
For Arsenal, selling Sanchez in the summer had come to represent defeat, but it was a battle which they had lost long ago in the failure to resolve his future one way or another and by holding on for 12 months they were simply delaying the inevitable. For Liverpool, backed by Coutinho’s long-term contract and understanding the likely reaction of their star player in asking him to do
something he did not wish to do, the club had a much better basis for their decision.
The elite end of English football has always been a brutal place when it comes to the sale and acquisition of the best players but there is not one simple guiding principle, no rule that says one has to dig in and refuse to sell or that one should always agree the deal. Every footballer is different, and every footballer reacts in his own way but when one looks at the recent record of Coutinho and Sanchez, was it really hard to predict how this might play out? (© Daily Telegraph, London)