After A Year, Philippe Coutinho’s Performance in Barcelona Hasn’t Meet the Expectation

DBasia.news – January 6th, 2018, Barcelona announced the success of signing Philippe Coutinho. A year after he joined from Liverpool until now, his performance is still far from expectation.

Coutinho joined with a 120 million euro transfer fee plus an additional bonus 40 million euro. With that worth, he is the most expensive player of all time.

It’s reasonable to question his quality in Barcelona considering thebudget. However, he is still 26 and has a plenty of time for improvement.

It’s consistency that differentiates Coutinho and other players. But after a year, he isn’t included in Ernesto Valverde main squad.

Most of the time, Valverde sent three front players. They are Lionel Messi, Luis Suarez, and Ousmane Dembele. By the performance of those three, it’s difficult for Coutinho to steal thespot.

There was an effort to place the former Liverpool player in the midfield, to make it easier for him to arrange the strategy. But, Valverde chooses the midfielder with a strong physical strength and high mobility like Arturo Vidal and Ivan Rakitic to accompany Sergio Busquets.

The former Inter Milan player just scored 15 goals and 10 assists in 44 caps. Certainly, he’s believed could score more than the current achievement.

Moreover, seeing the chance creation, Coutinho just does one shot of every match in average. It’s the proof that he hasn’t adapted well with Barcelona game.

Thus, Coutinho needs to develop his game as wanted by Ernesto Valverde. If he fails, Blaugrana have the substitute player worth 160 million euro.