COUTOF ORDER

Coutinho’s badly-timed transfer request overshadows Liverpool’s season-opener and threatens to destabilise Klopp, but Kop chiefs will play hardball with rebel star

FOR Philippe Coutinho, the stakes of a big money move to Barcelona are high enough to sabotage Liverpool’s season less than 24 hours before the big kick-off.

Yet for his manager Jurgen Klopp they are even higher.

For him, it is not just the future of one important player that is at stake, but the very future of the football club itself, and the team he has so carefully crafted over the past years.

Klopp, for all his romance about the history, traditions and politics of the sport, is a realist at heart. Even yesterday, he acknowledged every player has his price... but only if the time is right.

The German manager has told Coutinho several times the timing of Barca’s £90million bid was most certainly not right, and their interest would not be entertained at any price. So have Liverpool’s owners.

It is understood the American camp have spoken to the player and his agent throughout the summer – most recently yesterday – when they said even if he submitted a transfer request it would not be considered. He did anyway.

That says much about the situation, and there is both dismay and anger at the timing of the attack from the player’s camp, coming just before the Premier League opening weekend, and more importantly a few days before a crucial Champions League play-off in Hoffenheim.

Yet the stance will not change. Liverpool will keep Coutinho to his contract, and they believe when the window closes he will settle down and show professionalism, if only because there is a World Cup coming up, and he can’t afford to miss out on a place in the Brazil team.

It is the Reds’ key card, and the reason why Klopp was so confident when he said yesterday: “I had to sell a lot of players in my managerial career, and maybe everybody has a price... in the right moment.

“But the only thing I can say about this is that in life everything is about timing – whichever club asks early enough. It’s like how we (Liverpool) do it. If you ask early enough, you can either switch the plan or whatever. But you cannot come up, close to the start of the season – it’s like I said, the club is bigger than anybody. That is the most important thing. It’s about doing it in the right moment, how we do it when we want to bring players in. That is how it is. It is about timing, the right moment. In the wrong moment? No price.”

Coutinho certainly picked his moment yesterday. As Klopp (above, with Lallana) was repeating the owners’ statement that the player would be at Anfield on September 1, his advisers were leaking about a written transfer request. It took an hour longer for it to actually be submitted, with Coutinho leaving the training ground – after reporting for treatment on a bad back – to email the club’s sporting director Michael Edwards directly. By then, the owners had spoken again with the player, making clear any transfer request would be rejected, and it was... out of hand, immediately.

Now the ball is in Coutinho’s court once more. But there seems little more he can do.

He is injured, and unlikely to play again before the window closes at the end of the month, so even a strike and going back to Brazil would have little impact. He will be asked to act professionally with respect towards team-mates and fans.

And there is history with the Reds’ owners.

They took a similar stance with the more vocal and volatile Luis Suarez, and he remained as they said, to play out of his skin in a World Cup year and almost lead Liverpool to the title.

Even now, even after yesterday’s drama and sabotage, that scenario looks most likely for Coutinho, and if he stars as expected for Brazil during Russia 2018, then a move next summer is far more likely, with PSG rivalling Barca for his signature.