Philippe Coutinho has signed for Santos until the end of the season, which means he and Neymar will finally be team-mates at a club rather than only for Brazil. They have known each other since they were teenagers. They have never actually played together in a league game.
Santos announced it with an old photo of the two of them as kids, next to a new one of them re-enacting the same pose in the gym. Then came the dressing-room video, Neymar hugging him at the door, Coutinho saying: "If it's a dream, I don't want to wake up."
Seven months without a club
He has been out of work since February. Coutinho went back to Vasco da Gama, his boyhood club, in 2024 and left after 81 appearances saying he was "tired mentally" - a rare bit of honesty from a player who spent most of the previous decade being told he was underperforming a price tag.
That price tag was £142m, the fee Barcelona paid Liverpool in 2018. Before it he scored 54 goals in 201 games at Anfield and was, for a couple of seasons, the most watchable player in the Premier League. After it came Barcelona, a loan at Bayern Munich, Aston Villa, Al-Duhail in Qatar, then home.
Why Santos, and why now
Neymar returned to Santos in January last year, also going back to where he started. The club have needed the attention and the ticket sales that come with names like these, and a short deal to the end of the campaign costs them very little if it does not work.
For Coutinho at 34, the calculation is simpler. He wanted to play, somebody wanted him, and the somebody happens to be his closest friend in the game. Whether the legs are still there for a Brasileirao run-in is a separate question and the answer will arrive quickly.
Do not expect the 2015 version. Expect a left foot that still knows where the corner of the goal is, used in twenty-minute bursts.
Transfer facts: Philippe Coutinho, 34, attacking midfielder, joins Santos FC on a deal until the end of the 2026 season. Free agent since leaving Vasco da Gama in February. Career: Vasco, Inter Milan, Liverpool (54 goals in 201 games), Barcelona (£142m in 2018), Bayern Munich, Aston Villa, Al-Duhail, Vasco.
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