"I am very happy to be here. This is a dream come true and I hope to meet everyone's expectations on the pitch," Coutinho said. Minutes before the Brazilian midfielder put pen to paper after a whirlwind few days, the club said a thigh injury would delay his debut until the end of January.
Barca's swoop for Coutinho is outranked only by Paris Saint-Germain's stunning world record 222-million-euro signing of Neymar from Barcelona last year, and the Paris club's capture of French striker Kylian Mbappe in a deal eventually worth 180 million euros. His arrival will help Barcelona to move on from the humiliation of losing Neymar to Qatar-backed PSG, and his presence alongside Lionel Messi and Luis Suarez will help take the pressure off another of the club's stars, 33-year-old Andres Iniesta.
Bartomeu said the club had secured "one of the stars of world football" and admitted that Liverpool had put up a fight to keep the player. "It was not easy and other clubs expressed an interest in him, but he was determined to come here," the president said.