If you owned a football team, would you pay Liverpool Football Club €200 million for Philippe Coutinho? Even in this hyper-inflated transfer market, does that seem like too much for you? Perhaps the 200m Euro ($237m, £183m) price tag was just Anfield’s way of further driving home their original point- Coutinho is simply not for sale.
Barcelona Sporting Director Albert Soler said 200 million is what LFC asked them to pay for the Brazilian midfielder.
“The idea of spending 100 million euros on a player just a few years ago would have been madness but it seems that this is the way things are going,” Soler said at a press conference held for the purpose of discussing Barca’s transfer window.
“At one time, Barcelona were market leaders but now prices are being dictated by hedge funds. Whole countries are now the principal agents in the market. Everything’s changed. We decided not to put the club’s economic status and heritage at risk.
“It’s reached the stage where one club paid 50 million for a goalkeeper. We’re relieved that UEFA are opening investigations. We’re not going to enter into a market which is has gone way out of control – Liverpool were asking 200 million euros for Coutinho.”
Barcelona, one of the world’s top three superpowers in Europe after every season these days, had a disastrous summer transfer window, especially by their lofty standards. They needed to do some spin and some damage control following the closure of the Spanish transfer window on Friday.
Their claims about Coutinho could be just that: self-affirming spin.
Paul M. Banks runs The Sports Bank.net and TheBank.News, which is partnered with News Now and Minute Media. Banks, a former writer for the Washington Times, NBC Chicago.com and Chicago Tribune.com, currently contributes regularly to WGN CLTV and Chicago Now.
Follow him on Twitter, Instagram, Sound Cloud, LinkedIn and YouTube.