OFFLOAD COUTINHO AND KISS THE TITLE GOODBYE
MARTIN SAMUEL’S NEW FRIDAY COLUMN
DON’T let Donald Trump’s tax plans fool you. In football, trickle- down economics can be a positive thing. In 2013, when Tottenham sold Gareth Bale to Real Madrid, the money they received was redistributed via the purchase of Paulinho, Nacer Chadli, Roberto Soldado, Etienne Capoue, Christian Eriksen, Erik Lamela and Vlad Chiriches.
So Madrid’s money trickled down to Corinthians, FC Twente, Valencia, Toulouse, Ajax, Roma and Steaua Bucharest: seven clubs in six countries.
Looking at the transfer activity of those clubs that summer, Tottenham’s largesse then trickled further to Cerro Porteno, Coimbra, Penapolense, Ponte Preta, Londrina, Monterrey, Ajax, PEC Zwolle, Valerenga, Volendam, RKC Waalwijk, Cruzeiro, Real Zaragoza, Rubin Kazan, Vitoria Setubal, Napoli, Chelsea, Levante, Legia Warsaw, Sporting Gijon, Hercules, Red Star Belgrade, Esbjerg, Young Boys, Utrecht, Heracles Almelo, PSV Eindhoven, Udinese, FC Vaslui, Otelul Galati, FC Viitorul and CFR Cluj.
This list does not include loans or free transfers and is a minimum calculation. It has, for instance, the £27million Tottenham paid Roma for Lamela eaten up by two deals with PSV and Udinese for Kevin Strootman and Medhi Benatia. Yet that money could equally be attributed to other Roma business that summer benefiting Fiorentina, Arsenal, Dinamo Zagreb, Genoa and Cagliari.
There is another level below this in which the £12.1m Udinese got for Benatia, because Roma got £27m for Lamela and Tottenham £85m for Bale, then helped Botafogo, Universidad de Chile, Novara, Granada, Slaven Belupo and Inter Zapresic, but we’ve got to stop somewhere or be here all day.
You get the idea. In right-wing politics trickle- down economics means tax breaks for the very rich will leak down to benefit the very poor — debatable, at best — while in football it means when the very wealthy splash it about, a lot of clubs get wet.
This will certainly happen again around Neymar. Paris Saint-Germain have taken £196m of Qatar’s money and presented it to Barcelona, who this week arrived ready to hand Liverpool a sizeable cut with a £90m offer for Philippe Coutinho.
Had they been successful, using the current rumour mill as a yardstick, this might have opened the way for transfer business with Southampton, or Arsenal, who in turn could have involved any combination of Manchester City, Benfica, Lazio, Atletico Madrid, Monaco, Nice, Barcelona, West Ham or Everton. And so the trickle would continue.
But here’s the problem. What if you don’t fancy a trickle? Selling Coutinho might allow Liverpool to participate in a viable means of wealth redistribution but Jurgen Klopp knows it would be ruinous to his plans for this season.
From an economic perspective, trickling down works, from a professional perspective, some clubs never recover. The sale of Luis Suarez to Barcelona in 2014 covered the purchase of Adam Lallana, Dejan Lovren and Lazar Markovic, but Liverpool have not been the same since.
Having come within a whisker of their first title win in the modern era, Liverpool have not challenged without Suarez. It took them three seasons to return to the Champions League and cost Brendan Rodgers, the coach, his job.
Coutinho isn’t as influential, but there is no like-for-like replacement on the market this summer and Klopp knows it. No wonder he is adamant that Coutinho has no price. To sell now would be to as good as resign from the title race, perhaps even the top four, too. With Coutinho, Liverpool only came fourth last season. Without him, it is hard to imagine they could maintain that position, no matter the strength of the summer recruits.
All economic systems have flaws,
and trickle-down shares out football’s wealth, but not its power. Barcelona will find a way of passing on their Qatari windfall — and Ousmane Dembele’s unexpected absence from Borussia Dortmund’s training yesterday, coinciding with a Barcelona bid, sounds ominous — but that doesn’t make it good business for everybody.
sell Coutinho and Liverpool will be £100m richer, but as impoverished as the day Klopp first walked through the door.