The biggest clubs are starting to have some serious problems when it comes to offloading their more expensive players.
Financial fair play has only really widened the gap between the richest and poorest clubs, so it’s severely shrunken the pool of clubs who can afford to shell out big money on players. That means a financial hit is inevitable if someone doesn’t work out.
The situation with Philippe Coutinho at Barcelona was an interesting one, in many ways he looked like the perfect player for them, and his first season actually went well.
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Then it started to go wrong, to the point he was loaned out to Bayern Munich and it doesn’t seem like he has any long term future at the Nou Camp.
Mundo Deportivo recently reported on his future, and it does sound like Barca will take a sizeable hit if they do decide to sell him. They state he was signed for €120m, but the club know they won’t get anything like that for him now.
They go on to say they would probably accept an offer of around €80-90m to let him go in the Summer, which could amount to a loss of up to €40m.
At this point it’s not clear where he would actually end up, he’s been okay at Bayern but might not have shown enough to justify a permanent move, so they would need another club to show some interest.
He turns 28 in the Summer so these are his prime years, but he’s also been poor for a couple of seasons now so that price tag still looks like a big gamble for any potential suitors.