Liverpool Cost Themselves Coutinho Add-On, But Still Come Out Ahead

Liverpool continue looking pretty, pretty good after the Philippe Coutinho transfer.

On the pitch, the Reds played their way to consecutive Champions League finals, and to (at least) 94 points in the Premier League without the diminutive Brazilian. Off the pitch, Liverpool benefitted from the £105 million base fee, plus add-ons, that was smartly reinvested into key positions of need and renewed long-term player contracts. The base fee alone essentially covered the transfers of Alisson Becker from Roma and Fabinho from Monaco. Two Brazilians for the price of one.

However, Liverpool cost themselves the opportunity to cash in on £4.5 million of those Coutinho add-ons after seeing off Barcelona at Anfield Tuesday night. The transfer agreement stipulated £4.5 million if Barca won the Champions League in 2018/19, and an additional £4.5 if they win it next year. (Assuming Couts is still at the club, presumably).

While at least one of those add-ons is now out the window, Liverpool are already well on their way to earning most of those additional fees. Barcelona have had to ship £4.5 million to Liverpool for every 25 appearances Coutinho makes for them, up to his 100th match (according to his wiki, he is currently on 74 appearances). Moreover, they already paid an additional £4.5 million just for qualifying for this year’s Champions league.

Transfer add-ons aside, Liverpool will also expect a financial windfall by qualifying for the final. The Reds earned €15 million (~£12.9 million) by reaching the final, and would earn an additional €4 million (~£3.4 million) for winning it. That, in turn, would qualify the Reds for the UEFA Super Cup (an additional €3.5 million, or ~£3 million), for which the winner also receives a prize of €1 million (~£860,000).

Including the money that Liverpool potentially cost themselves because of Coutinho (I say potentially because they still could have lost the final), Liverpool will earn a minimum of ~£8.4 million by reaching the final, and as much as ~£15.7 million if they win all the things there are to win.

So yeah, in addition to the intangible and priceless excitement of reaching yet another final, Liverpool came out way ahead in the deal. And if we have to knock Barcelona out next year and “cost” ourselves more money, well, that’s just a price we’ll have to pay.