The story starts when Luis Enrique decided to get rid of Douglas, and the sporting director Robert Fernandez and his team put hands to work in trying to find a club for the Brazilian.

Ivan San Antonio

It was not an easy task because his salary is high for any team that would want him, even though Barcelona were - as has happened - willing to pay a large part of it. For this, Alaves and Leganes discarded his arrival.

But it was not just difficulty finding clubs that stopped him leaving - but the player himself had no intention of abandoning the club, where he arrived in August 2014 from Sao Paulo, signing a contract until June 2019. He resisted until the last moment before finally relenting and agreeing to move to El Molinon and Sporting Gijon. It was not easy to achieve his departure.

On August 26 his loan to Sporting was announced, but first there was a bizarre incident in the club offices. Douglas was summoned there and with all the papers on the table to send him to Abelardo's team, he refused to sign.

The Brazilian would not listen to reason and seemed very upset at having to have to leave the Camp Nou. So much so that everyone present saw the player was broken. In fact, Douglas was show upset at how events were going he took the decision neither to sign the papers nor leave the offices.

The club had to take action, telling one of the lawyers to come and try and help with the mission of getting Douglas to leave the facilities. Eventually he convinced the player that his squatting attempt was not correct. Eventually he came to his senses and had no choice but to give in, sign the papers, and start a new adventure with Sporting Gijon with some dignity.