Jurgen Klopp made sure his former club Borussia Dortmund squeezed Barcelona out of as much money as possible when they sold Ousmane Dembele in summer 2017.
The young Frenchman became the Catalan club’s record buy back in August, costing them £135m if add-ons are met – their record purchase until yesterday’s £142m Coutinho deal.
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Why Klopp has made furious phone-calls to Ousmane Dembele
But the reason Dortmund received such a gargantuan fee is because Klopp contacted his old employers and alerted them that under no circumstances would Liverpool be offloading the Brazilian – encouraging them to stand firm on price.
This is according to Raphael Honigstein, German journalist and friend of Klopp who just spent a week at BVB’s training camp under new boss Peter Stöger.
“Dortmund revealed that they really benefited from Barcelona’s interest in Coutinho in the summer…” Honigstein told the Totally Football Show.
“Because Jurgen Klopp passed on a message to them saying, ‘Don’t worry – we’re not going to sell – so if Barca come to you for Dembele – be assured they have enough money to spend… So ask for a lot of money!'”
We kind of like that Klopp hates Barca as much as we do, to be honest…
Providing we don’t sell them anybody else though having relinquished our Coutinho stance, we hope we don’t have to speak about them for some time.
We would say something like, ‘We wish Coutinho luck,’ but right now, we don’t.