Brendan Rodgers was a guest on The Beautiful Game podcast today, and while he was focused on his current club Leicester, he also told some stories which related to his time at Chelsea as a youth coach.
The former Liverpool boss said he was sad to see how Philippe Coutinho, the man he had brought to Anfield, was being spoken about after a couple of bad seasons.
He explained how he and the Chelsea scouts had been watching the Brazilian as a kid – and that they even tried to sign the attacking midfielder as a 14 year old.
Now that would have been impossible given European clubs can’t sign under 18s from abroad. But what he likely means is that Chelsea had their eyes on him from that age, and wanted to get him to sign a pre-contract deal that would commit him to joining us when he turned 18.
Unfortunately Inter Milan had got there first. It didn’t work out for Phil there, but from Italy he got his move to Liverpool, where he was finally able to link up with Rodgers.
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