Another Day, Another Series of Barcelona Lies

On September 1st, the summer transfer window finally, mercifully, closed. And it closed with Philippe Coutinho still contractually obligated to play football for Liverpool. But that hasn’t stopped Barcelona from trying to keep the story alive, mostly through more and more lies.

Josep Maria Bartomeu, Barcelona’s president (at least for now), is back playing the greatest hits from the summer transfer window: Liverpool would have sold Coutinho for €200 million.

“I will not say how much we offered, but [Liverpool] asked for €200m,” Bartomeu told TV3 in an interview.

The Barcelona chief went on to immediately contradict himself about how much the Catalan giants offered for Coutinho’s services.

“We weren’t going to give €200 million or €150 million – we decided to step away from such an expensive market, our offer was less than €100 million, with add-ons it could have reached €120 million.”

Would you look at that? A nugget of truth! Yes, it was less than €100 million. It was reportedly closer to €90 million (what’s €10 million among friends?) with over €35 million in mostly unachievable add-ons.

There is no indication that Liverpool asked for €200 million for the player. Indeed, their stance that Coutinho was not for sale remained consistent for the entire transfer window.

Although there was likely a price between the actual offer and €200 million that Liverpool would have at least considered, Barcelona decided to give up the chase and use media spin instead.

And now, you can take out the world’s tiniest violin to play a mournful melody as Bartomeu bemoans money in football.

“Money has come into football from outside the game and made [the transfer market] more expensive, which explains what happened with Coutinho.

“We have to make these investments in La Masia and the club’s academy, we must respect the rules.”

Yes, life is hard for Barcelona. Now where did I put that violin?