Philippe Coutinho has played 598 minutes for Aston Villa, in which time he has scored four goals and set up three more. Victory at Leeds on Thursday meant Villa have won three league games in a row for the first time since the beginning of last season. There is a real sense of momentum there now and it is not just about results. Coutinho, quite aside from his direct contribution, is a player of stature, the sort of figure whose very presence can persuade fans, even other players, that a club is going places. Which inevitably prompts the question: what is he doing at Villa?
It’s probably largely an economic question. As the rest of European football retrenches because of the economic impact of the pandemic, the Premier League’s relentless expansion goes on. The English middle class can afford players who are out of range to all but a tiny handful abroad.
But it’s also a question rooted in modern ideas of what an attack-minded player should be. To create is no longer enough and Coutinho is not a natural presser. His gift is inconsistent; already at Villa he has had one stinker, in the win over Everton. Football is haunted by these castaways left behind by the economics of the modern game: too expensive for all but the absolute elite to own, but too unreliable for the absolute elite to play.
In his second autobiography, published in 2015 after his move to MLS, Steven Gerrard told Liverpool to “treasure Philippe”, saying he could become “Liverpool’s main man and a top player in world football”. But in the last game Gerrard had played with Coutinho, Liverpool lost 6-1 at Stoke. Coutinho’s is a career dotted with major disappointments: Liverpool’s 3-1 defeat to Sevilla, Barcelona’s 4-0 defeat at Anfield, Brazil’s 2-1 defeat to Belgium …
Two months after Gerrard’s autobiography was released, Jürgen Klopp replaced Brendan Rodgers as Liverpool manager. There was a thought Coutinho wasn’t a natural Klopp player but he seemed to adapt well enough. A year after Klopp’s arrival, though, Barcelona made him a target, with the Catalan newspaper Sport announcing “Objetivo Coutinho”. Immediately he became not just a footballer but also a pawn in a wider game of super-club power relations and also therefore less than a footballer, somebody else’s prize. For Coutinho, nothing has been quite the same since.
He signed a new contract in January 2017, another example of Liverpool’s smart recent transfer dealings; if they were going to lose him, they were going to ensure they secured an enormous fee. That arrived the following January, thanks to Barcelona’s desperation to spend the money they had received for Neymar. Humiliated by losing one Brazilian star, they needed another; Coutinho’s form had wavered as he suffered a back injury but Liverpool were able to negotiate the fee up to €120m with a potential further €40m in add-ons. That largely funded the signings of Virgil van Dijk and Allison; Liverpool, in the end, were the biggest beneficiaries of Paris Saint-Germain’s record purchase of Neymar.
Coutinho never settled at Barcelona. His debut, in a Copa del Rey tie against Espanyol, showed all his skill, was capped by a nutmeg and celebrated by a fanbase eager for a new hero, but for all the will that he should succeed, it soon became apparent he was neither the new Neymar nor the new Andrés Iniesta. He was simply not what Barça needed. An ageing midfield was already struggling to cover for an increasingly indulgent forward line. The structure was breaking down. His regains per game, a crude guide to how well a player is pressing, halved to 0.9 in his first full season there.
The defining games of that season were the two legs of the Champions League semi-final, against Liverpool. He was taken off after an hour of each and jeered on both occasions: by Barcelona fans who had come to see him as an emblem of the club’s problems and by Liverpool fans revelling in the fact a player who had deserted them was on the receiving end of a historic comeback. This, Coutinho must have reflected, was the home he could have had, rather than becoming this wandering ghost.
He was loaned to Bayern, showed flickers of his best – a hat-trick against Werder Bremen, a brilliant performance against Paderborn, two symbolic late goals in the 8-2 win over Barcelona – but once the high-pressing Hansi Flick had replaced Niko Kovac as coach, Bayern were never going to sign him permanently. So it was back to Barcelona, where he found himself behind the 18-year-old Pedri in the pecking order, then suffered a knee injury that required surgery.
He is 29 and should be at the peak of his powers, but he fits nowhere. He has the ability and salary of a super-club player but he is not famous enough for the celebrity clubs and doesn’t press well enough for the philosophy sides. As the pandemic hit finances across Europe, nobody could afford him. Once he would have been characterised as a luxury player, but who can afford luxuries these days?
Barça ended up desperate to offload his €20m-a-year salary so they could register Ferran Torres while complying with La Liga’s salary cap. Coutinho, desperate to get back into the Brazil squad before the World Cup, reportedly accepted a 35% pay cut. Whether Villa needed another creator is debatable but Gerrard clearly still rates him and he is the sort of player who makes football fun – which, for an aspiring mid-table side, is a not insignificant attribute. But fun, as Everton found with James Rodríguez, can be unreliable.
Coutinho’s regains are now at 1.0 per game, 70% less than was managed in his final season at Villa by Jack Grealish, the player for whom he would seem a spiritual replacement. Coutinho could not be accommodated at Barça or Bayern but perhaps at Villa the team can be built for him, accentuating his ability and compensating for his flaws. Perhaps this is the level in the modern game for a player of his characteristics. Perhaps finally, after four years of drift, he has found a home. Perhaps.
