This dream is not for everyone - why Christian Eriksen, Diego Costa and Philippe Coutinho may be wary of moving in January

Moves in the middle of the season can often come with complications

Christian Eriksen has endured a difficult year at Inter Milan having moved from Tottenham at the end of January 2020. Reuters

“This dream is not for everyone”. That was the punchline to the lavish video shot by Internazionale’s production specialists when they unveiled the most exciting of their several new signings in the 2020 winter transfer window.

The Milan opera house, La Scala, had been hired for the shoot, an orchestra played, and Christian Eriksen strode down the central aisle of the auditorium towards the stage. The dream was not for everyone, said the montage, with the implication the dream is only for talents as special as the gifted Dane.

Eriksen had been purchased for what Inter considered a bargain €20 million ($24.5m). He was the new year’s hot property, having let his contract at Tottenham Hotspur run into its last year, so he would be free in June 2020. Spurs accepted the offer late in the January. Inter had captured in Eriksen a genuine superstar, still only 27, so with several peak years ahead of him given the attacking midfield position he plays.

As every other major club around Europe has now been told from Inter’s offices, Eriksen is the standout footballing property on the market this January, too. The club who bought him for what looked a snip 12 months ago would not baulk if they could just recoup their costs in a sale before this winter window closes. A turbulent year in the game’s economy has lowered market values generally. A very poor year in the career of Eriksen means he and Inter see an exit as best for both parties.

This dream is not for everyone: You could apply the phrase to all mid-season transfers. Sometimes they work beautifully, as Bruno Fernandes did for Manchester United, or Erling Haaland for Borussia Dortmund. But any player joining a new club where hierarchies are established, routines set, faces extra challenges, and, although the Eriksen case is an extreme portrait of how fast hopes can diminish, the prominent footballers on the market in 2021’s first window includes a few who are there because previous winter moves worked out badly.

There’s Eriksen, who made a tepid start at Inter and by the summer was more and more absent from head coach Antonio Conte’s plans. Inter may have imagined he was a low-risk recruit when he signed a four-year contract and dressed up for his La Scala show - that if he didn’t adapt they could then sell a widely-admired playmaker still in his 20s for a profit. The pandemic-driven recession makes them doubt that.

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21 transfers on the cards for January 2021

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Besides, Inter know only too well how a misjudged winter transfer can devalue a footballer. They could just ask Alexis Sanchez, a Premier League hero when he left Arsenal in January 2018 to join Manchester United; available to Inter, who eventually signed him for free, the following year when United wanted to be rid of a player who almost never clicked at Old Trafford.

Diego Costa, 32, is available this January, too, having cut his ties with Atletico Madrid. Once upon a time he was their main man, the combative essence of Diego Simeone’s team. When he re-registered with Atletico from Chelsea three Januarys ago, it looked a shrewd reunion. But he had missed a lot of football in the previous six months, so there was some awkwardness in his mid-season arrival. Injuries, illnesses and fallouts have since knocked him down the pecking order. Atletico will bid him a bittersweet good-bye. The last six months have eroded much of the goodwill between club, head coach and player.

Then there’s Philippe Coutinho, who like Eriksen and Diego Costa, thrived in English football. That’s why Barcelona were ready to stake a record club fee on prising him from Liverpool. Ideally, they would have bought him in the summer of 2017. A tough negotiating stance at Anfield meant the talks, amid Coutinho’s own pressure to leave, dragged on.

He finally moved, for well over €150m, in January 2018. By the middle of that year, he was being booed by sections of Camp Nou. By 2019, he was on loan at Bayern Munich, where he had the contradictory experience of winning a treble, mainly from off the bench, and being told there was no interest at Bayern in signing him permanently. Barcelona could not shift the Brazilian and his vast salary last summer. They then lost much of their hope of doing so this winter when he picked up a knee injury that leaves him out of action until at least March.