Former Liverpool manager Graeme Souness believes the club made the wrong decision in refusing to sell Philippe Coutinho to Barcelona this summer.
“I would have accepted an offer in excess of £100million,” the Scot told Sunday Times. Barcelona crossed that mark with several bids for Coutinho, but all of their offers were knocked back by Liverpool.
“I know Paris Saint-Germain have paid £198m for Neymar and another £166m for Kylian Mbappe from Monaco, for his potential as an 18-year-old, but I would argue that for that sort of money they have to be game-changers on a regular basis.
“I would have taken Barcelona’s offer.”
Souness’ comments seem to suggest that he does not rate Coutinho as highly as Neymar or Mbappe, or, at the very least, that the Brazilian is not a consistent “game-changer”.
The former Liverpool manager added that now that the transfer window has closed with Coutinho still a Reds player, it is time for the 25-year-old to show respect for the club through his performances after missing the opening five games of Liverpool’s season.
His absence was said to be due to a back injury, but Coutinho played for Brazil last week in their World Cup qualifier against Ecuador, and there has long been the strong suspicion that he missed games purely because of his transfer saga.
“You would like to think, given that the boy signed a five-year contract only in January, he would have some respect for Liverpool The common sense way would have been for him to turn round, so it was coming from his mouth, and say: ‘I’ll stay another year.’
“That would have been doing the right thing by the club and the club doing the right thing by him, as happened with [Luis] Suarez.”
