While no football fan would openly admit it, there’s no denying we’ve all taken pleasure in a former player struggling to hit the heights after leaving our club.
For West Ham, that could be Domingos Quina.
The Portuguese midfielder joined the Hammers from rivals Chelsea as a youngster in 2016 and progressed up to West Ham’s first-team by the following year.
He would go on to make just six appearances for the club, though, racking up a paltry 115 minutes of action before joining Watford in 2018.
Things have been up and down at Vicarage Road since then, and this year, he finds himself on loan at Granada, having joined them on loan in January until the end of the season.
Things have not gone to plan in Spain, with him managing just six appearances and two goals in La Liga so far.
This weekend will see him travelling to take on Barcelona, and that’s led Ideal to look at things in something of a mocking manner.
They explain that Quina ‘will finally set foot in the Camp Nou’ although he will not be doing it in the manner he ‘had dreamed’ he would.
That’s because three summers ago, he was heavily linked with a move to Barcelona, where the club’s secretariat had ‘very good reports’ on him following success at youth level in Portugal and ‘so much talk’ at West Ham.
At that point, when it was clear he wouldn’t be staying with the Hammers, ‘almost the entire Premier League sighed’ for Quina, who was also ‘asked’ by Barça and Real Madrid.
In the Catalan media, they insisted Barcelona were his best option, but he decided to stay in England and sign for Watford, who assured him more ‘prominence’.
It was a move that was heavily advised by his brother, who insisted that it was the natural step for him before moving to a bigger club.
That option will ‘probably never happen again’, with the move away from West Ham looking to have been a very poor choice indeed.
