Philippe Coutinho was born on 12th June 1992 to Esmerelda Coutinho and Jose Carlos Correia in Rio de Janerio, Brazil. He was really into football from a very tender age so he followed his elder brothers Cristiano and Leandro to play futsal in the streets. He then joined a local football academy where he caught the eyes of youth coaches from the club Vasco da Gama, where he was offered a trial and ended up joining their youth team. He thrived at the youth academy and his efforts with the team was repaid by a call-up to the Brazilian under 15 national teams.
He continued to develop as a player which led the Italian giants Inter Milan to capture him at the young age of 16. With chances limited to the player at Inter, he was shipped out to loan to La Liga club Espanyol where he was able to showcase his talent which then caught the eye of 18 times premier league winners, Liverpool. He was bought by Liverpool from Inter in the fee about 8.5 million pounds. He has since become an important player in the Liverpool setup scoring 57 times in the process for the club. When Philippe Coutinho joined Liverpool in 2013, the Brazil forward was so lightly regarded that his signing was overshadowed by the arrival of Daniel Sturridge at Anfield earlier that month. But five years later, Coutinho has become such a formidable force that his departure will be mourned by Liverpool fans around the world if Barcelona complete their bid to land the Reds star in a blockbuster transfer that could reportedly be worth up to 160 million euros ($192 million).
Coutinho was just 20 and yet to fully harness his talents when Liverpool paid £8.5 million ($11.5 million) to bring him to the Premier League from Inter Milan, so perhaps it was not surprising that beating Southampton to his signature could not take the spotlight away from the capture of the highly-rated Sturridge from the Chelsea. It did not take long for Coutinho to seize the stage however and, while Sturridge’s injury-ravaged career is in danger of becoming an afterthought, the Brazilian is now one of the game’s most coveted players. Coutinho’s against-the-odds rise is a tribute to a tenacious personality inherited from his close-knit working-class family back home in the tough Rocha district of Rio de Janeiro.
Now married to childhood sweetheart Aine, Coutinho once said: “My family is the foundation of everything in my life.” He has needed that secure background to survive the slings and arrows of a career that might be glittering now, but for several years was full of potential pitfalls. Having honed his natural gifts while playing futsal, the smaller indoor version of the sport, with brothers Cristiano and Leandro, the diminutive Coutinho was offered a trial by Vasco da Gama. But Coutinho was so shy he clung to his father while the other youngsters warmed up. “After a short while and some motivation, I was fine. When I actually started to play, it was all normal and natural. I wasn’t shy anymore, I was enjoying it,” he recalled.
The road was to get rougher for Coutinho, who was snubbed by Real Madrid when the Spanish giants passed up the chance to sign him from his Brazilian club for just £2.2 million in 2008. Instead, at age 16 he moved to Inter, where then manager Rafael Benitez hailed him as “the future of Inter”.
That bold prediction was quickly forgotten as Coutinho found it difficult to adjust to life in Italy, with loan spells at Vasco and Espanyol providing more first-team opportunities but little to suggest his future stardom. Fortunately for Coutinho, Brendan Rodgers, then in charge at Liverpool, had spotted his potential when he helped Brazil win the Under-20 World Cup. Coutinho accepted the challenge of moving to England, where the frenetic and physical pace of play can sometimes overwhelm foreign imports.
He hit the ground running and scored his first goal for Liverpool on his full debut in a 5-0 victory over Swansea in February 2013. It helped that Coutinho is teetotal and a devout Christian with no time for the nightclub antics that have derailed the careers of so many of his peers.
That commitment to his craft fuelled Coutinho’s ascent and he quickly became an integral part of the Liverpool side that narrowly failed to end the club’s long wait to win the title in the 2013-14 season. Once Liverpool’s star striker Luis Suarez was sold to Barcelona in 2014, it was Coutinho who assumed the mantle of the team’s driving force. With 41 goals and countless assists in 152 league appearances for Liverpool, Coutinho was just as valuable to current boss Jurgen Klopp once he succeeded Rodgers. But silverware has been elusive at Anfield and a yearning for success on the grandest stage made him to move to Barcelona after he was offered over £100 million to sign him in August last year.
Philippe Coutinho is married to his teenage girlfriend Aine. Philippe and Aine have a daughter named Marie. He is very close to his parents and his brothers. He has tattoos in tribute to his parents, his brothers, and his wife. The diminutive playmaker is estimated to have a worth of around 27.64 million dollars.