chennai the fate of phillippe coutinho still hangs in the balance as fc barcelona haggle with liverpool to reach an agreement the 25yearold attacking midfielder may fetch a price of 140m which would make it the secondmost expensive transfer behind neymar and is expected to add more sting in an already lethal barcelona frontline including lionel messi and luis suarezinterestingly barcelonas prized target was extremely close to donning the colours of archrivals real madrid it was a decade ago that delhi dynamos coach miguel angel portugal the then technical director of real madrid travelled to brazil to see the talented coutinho he was highly impressed with the brazilians skills and finalized talks with the young footballers parents to bring him to real however upon his return to madrid portugal learnt the then real president ramon calderon wanted to sign another brazilian alipio instead despite his persuasion real didnt want to spend a nominal 2m then to acquire the services of coutinhoportugal said that he was surprised at reals decision its very simple i wanted coutinho because i saw him play and realised how good he is but when i came back to madrid i learnt that real decided to sign alipio with the money we had set aside for coutinho alipio was also a good player then but he definitely lacked the quality that i saw in coutinho my plan was to sign coutinho but the person calderon in real who was the most responsible preferred alipio portugal told toi on fridayserie a giants inter ended up signing the promising 16year old coutinho back then and later sold him to liverpool for 85m in 2013 alipio on the other hand was a flop at real and was released by los blancos after two years he is currently with brazilian outfit vila novawith barcelona ready to break the bank for coutinho portugal believes the catalan giants wont be disappointed each player has a price in the transfer market and at this moment that is the price of coutinho because there are teams who are ready to pay that much i think coutinho will repay the faith if he goes to barcelona portugal assertedafter winning five trophies last year including champions league and la liga real madrid seem to have lost their sheen a bit they are now placed fourth and are 14 points adrift of leaders barcelona with a game in hand portugal feels that liga title hope is over for real and they should focus on winning against paris saintgermain in the champions league when you are playing so many competitions in a year it is normal to flop in one or two i think the liga title cannot be reals anymore so they should stop worrying about the league and instead channelize their energy to win against psg in champions league because it will be very difficult given the team psg has he saidportugal believes that real made some poor choices in player retention real paid the