Newcastle United’s reported ‘dream’ signing was loved by Rafa Benitez

Add as preferred source on Google

According to a report in Brazil, Newcastle United have made Philippe Coutinho their ‘dream’ potential signing once their current takeover from a Saudi-backed consortium is completed. 

Metropoles suggest that Coutinho is the marquee addition Newcastle would like to bring to St James’ Park. 

Coutinho is out of favour at Barcelona and current loan club Bayern Munich has no desire to sign him permanently. SPORT is reporting that Barcelona would be looking to sell the player for €90 million (£79.5m) this summer and, given the wealth involved in this proposed Newcastle United takeover, that won’t be a problem fee. 

Coutinho is, as Newcastle knows, a very talented player. Indeed, their former manager Rafa Benitez believed so. 

The Spaniard was in charge of Inter Milan when Coutinho joined the Nerazzurri from Vasco da Gama in 2010. At the time, as reported by the BBC, Benitez labelled Coutinho ‘the future of Inter Milan’. 

He elaborated in 2018, shortly after Coutinho’s move to Barcelona, as reported by Goal. 

---

“It was a pleasant surprise to meet a player with the abilities of Philippe Coutinho. We had the chance to have a boy who, even then, in our era at Inter, had a lot of quality, a great ability to cause problems.

“He had an excellent pass, shot… he had everything, despite his young age, and a wide margin for improvement.

“I remember that, aside from all of that, we were struck by the great vision he had to make the final pass, the decisive one. That’s something very important in football.

“Best of all is that he was a very humble kid, a very hard-working professional and very eager to learn. He was willing to listen to improve his abilities. He had everything, everything.”

Clearly, Benitez was a huge fan of Coutinho’s, and had the Spaniard received more time at the San Siro, perhaps the Brazilian would have thrived in Italy. 

Instead, Benitez was gone by Christmas, and Coutinho never made a big impact at Inter before his switch to England. 

Benitez, for all his troubles with the Newcastle United board, seemed to love his time managing the club and had something of a rapport with the Toon Army. 

So if Coutinho comes asking about a potential move to St James’ Park, you can bet that Benitez will only have positive things to say, with the only negative being the outgoing ownership structure.