SHOCK BARCA BID FOR COUTINHO
Liverpool set to reject ¤80m offer for Brazilian ace
BARCELONA last night bid ¤80million (£72m) for Liverpool’s Brazil midfielder Philippe Coutinho.
Liverpool agreed a new deal until 2022 with the 25-year- old playmaker last season and are expected to reject the offer, feeling it falls short of the player’s true value in the current market.
That is unlikely to deter Barcelona, who have identified Coutinho as the replacement for Andres Iniesta, who is 33 and in the last year of what is beginning to look like his final contract at the Nou Camp.
Coutinho was highlighted as a target for Barcelona in the middle of last season, with his international team-mate Neymar expressing his hope a deal could be engineered.
If Barca decide to improve their offer, they would have to go beyond the £75m they paid for Luis Suarez in 2014 — Liverpool’s record sale.
Coutinho could play in Barcelona’s attack with Lionel Messi and his former team-mate and friend Suarez, but has been earmarked more as Iniesta’s replacement.
Even if Iniesta signs an extension in January, he started only 13 league games last season and
Barcelona will need to find a replacement.
Barca’s board are under fire for being inactive in the transfer market so far this summer and there are also accusations that they have turned their back on the club’s famous playing style.
Bidding for the brilliant Brazilian is also a reaction to Barcelona’s diminishing chances of landing another midfield target Marco Verratti.
The Italian’s decision to switch agents to Mino Raiola has hampered that deal. Barcelona had been dealing with the player’s previous representative Donato Di Campi and the change to Raiola has been badly received.
Relationships with Raiola have not been good since Barcelona dumpeded Zlatan Ibrahimovic inn 2010 after only one year and it seems Raiola is now more likely to negotiate a new deal for Verratti in Paris than a move away.
Coutinho is a veryry different player fromom Verratti but even with Barcelona also keen on a more defensive midfielder — they have looked at Guangzhou Evergrande’s Paulinho — they could still afford the luxury of signing one of the few players capable of replicating the magic of Iniesta.
Meanwhile, in Hong Kong, Jurgen Klopp revealed the lack of video footage of Dominic Solanke did not stop him signing the young striker.
Solanke scored a fine goal in Liverpool’s 2-0 Premier League Asia Trophy victory over Crystal Palace on Wednesday night following his move from Chelsea.
And his new boss admitted he did not know too much about the player, whose fee will be set by a tribunal, before he arrived.
‘It was difficult to find footage about him,’ Klopp said of the 19-year-old, who had a loan spell at Vitesse Arnhem and who made only one first-team appearance after coming through the ranks at Stamford Bridge. ‘It was a long time since he played so it was hard. The only thing we could get was a little bit in Holland and a bit of Under 20 or Under 19. That’s not the best footage.
‘I started to learn more and more and I trust the guys around us, the scouts, so I said, “Let’s do it”. I’ve seen a lot of skilled boys in my life and he looks like a nice project.’
Solanke, who won the Golden Ball as England’s Under 20s lifted the World Cup this summer, is one of two new arrivals at Liverpool so far, alongside £ 36.9m winger Mohamed Salah.Salah Back on Merseyside, Hull’s Andy Robertson is on the brink of becoming Liverpool’s third signing after having a medical. The left back was given permission to leave HHull’s training camp on WeWednesday when the two clubs agreed a deal for the Scotland international, worth more than £8m.
While Klopp builds his squad, he says the lack of a top-flight title since 1990 does not motivate him — although he acknowledges it is a different story for the club’s supporters.
‘I didn’t think about it,’ the manager said of Liverpool’s barren domestic run. ‘But obviously a lot of people in Liverpool think about it! I am not a little bit like this. It is not my motivation.’
Klopp completed the double with previous employers Borussia Dortmund in 2012 but is not interested in the acclaim that brought. He said: ‘Actually I don’t like this “special manager, first manager in whatever, 100 years, to win the double with Dortmund”.’ Additional reporting from Mike Keegan in Hong Kong