Former Barcelona star gets 'huge' offer to join Ronaldo in Saudi Arabia

Updated: 3 Apr 2023 17:42 BST
3 min read

Former Liverpool and Barcelona star Philippe Coutinho is reportedly the subject of a 'huge' offer from an unnamed Saudi Arabian club.

The Brazilian has struggled for form and fitness this season, only rarely featuring under Unai Emery at Aston Villa.

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Overall, the 30-year-old's recent career trajectory is a far cry from the incredible form he displayed at Liverpool, which made Barcelona willing to part with an eyebrow-raising fee of €150 million to get him back in 2018.

READ: Barcelona’s 10 worst transfers of all time

Since then, the creative attacker has found the football business tough going. Unable to perform at the same level as before, Coutinho eventually went out on loan to Bayern Munich. In January 2022, he temporarily joined Aston Villa where he regained some semblance of consistency, enough to convince Villa to pay the comparatively trifling fee of €20m to get him permanently.

This season, however, the Brazilian is again failing to impress, scoring just once and having started most of his 22 games on the bench. Now, an opportunity to help him out of his Villa misery has appeared.

Coutinho to link up with Ronaldo?

According to Football Insider, an unnamed Saudi Arabian club is preparing a 'huge' offer for the 30-year-old. This would make Coutinho the latest big name to move to the Arabian peninsula after Cristiano Ronaldo's much-publicised transfer to Al-Nassr, where he has hit nine goals in eight league outings.

Perhaps the club in question is Al-Hilal - although this is purely speculation - whose hopes of landing Lionel Messi appear to be diminishing. At one point, the Asian behemoth were said to be prepared to pay Messi twice as much as Ronaldo's salary, but a return to Barcelona seems more likely now.