Barcelona is keeping close watch on Philippe Coutinho’s performances for Bayern Munich

Philippe Coutinho has enjoyed a fine start to life at Bayern Munich. The Little Magician has quickly made his presence felt in Niko Kovac’s squad and has already tallied 2 goals and 3 assists from 8 appearances across competitions. His numbers, though, don’t quite do his performances the full justice they deserve. Statistic tracking website WhoScored recently ranked Coutinho as one of the best performing summer signings across Europe thus far, with an average rating of 7.53 (out of 10).

Barcelona, the club that Coutinho is on loan from, has been keeping a close watch on how well the Brazilan has been performing for Bayern. Per a report by MARCA, the Catalan giants have sent representatives from the club to watch Coutinho in action on two separate occasions this season just to see how strongly he’s performing. The report did not specify which matches they were present at, but Coutinho has hardly put a foot wrong for Bayern when he’s been involved.

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He’s currently on a one-year loan at Bayern, but, per MARCA, the mood around the Barcelona camp is that they’re confident Bayern will want to exercise the option buy him at the end of the season long loan. Barcelona paid Liverpool approximately €150 million in the 2018 winter transfer window to bring him to the Catalans, but his time there did not pan out how they had hoped. They now want to leverage his strong performances with Bayern to ask for a substantial fee if or when Bayern buys him on a permanent deal. A lot of that, of course, also depends on what happens in Barcelona’s efforts to bring Neymar back from Paris Saint-Germain. He would likely cost somewhere around €200 million, and the deal would more than likely involve other players as well.

Some of Coutinho’s best bits from this season thus far: