Chelsea are said to be the frontrunners in signing Barcelona misfit Philippe Coutinho but now there might be a few apprehensions creeping in.
The playmaker’s agent has recently admitted that Coutinho wishes to return back to the Premier League which is a great sign for the Blues since Lampard has been chasing him for a couple of months now.
Joorabchian confirmed to Sky Sports: “He has a desire to come back to the Premier League at some point.
“It may not happen this year, it may happen this year – we don’t know. We really have not discussed anything for now.”
Will Chelsea miss out on Philippe Coutinho?
Right now, Philippe Coutinho is out on loan to Bayern Munich and recently the club’s chief had revealed that they will not be signing the Brazilian on a permanent deal in the summer. And this was yet another boost for the London based club.
“The option expired and we haven’t activated it,” Bayern Munich chief Karl-Heinz Rummenigge told Der Spiegel magazine on Friday, as reported by Football London.
“Now we’re going to draw up squad planning internally (for next season) and we’ll see if he still has a role to play with us or not.”
But now all of a sudden, Coutinho’s agent Kia Joorabchian has also hinted that he could remain at Bayern Munich for the 2020-21 season, not as a permanent signing but as a loanee.
“It’s up to Bayern Munich whether or not they want to extend the loan,” he said. “It’s purely Bayern’s decision, we have a will to stay, and we will see about next season when we get back to this ‘new normal’.
“We’ve had some conversations with Bayern about next season [already].”
This news is a serious blow for Chelsea since the badly need the services of a player like Philippe Coutinho and at one point, they went agonisingly close to signing him up.
But now with each passing day, it looks like the player is moving away from them and if this Bayern Munich revelation was not enough, some rumours over the past few weeks or so have been claiming that fellow Premier League rivals Tottenham Hotspur have also grown a liking towards the Barcelona misfit.
Jose Mourinho is looking to rebuild his squad for the next season and the Portuguese manager seems to have identified Coutinho as the fulcrum to his new-look first XI.
Chelsea are still one of the favourites to sign Philippe Coutinho in the summer but if his agent’s words are anything to go by then it will be Bayern Munich who will have the final say in this whole matter.
