After a few years following these forums anonimously, as a Vasco da Gama supporter, I felt I needed to register to speak about Douglas. No doubt he is our best player (even if Vasco's current team is pretty average, with some good veterans as Nenê, former PSG, or Luis Fabiano, former Sevilla striker).
Douglas is incredibly good. He's plays better for Vasco than Alex Teixeira did on his age, and most supporters feel like we're losing another Coutinho, for the same cheap price - if he stayed for a couple of years, who knows for how much we could have sold him. No doubt he is already, at 19, one of the best box-to-box CMs in Brazilian league, and maybe from Brazil, as a real box-to-box CM is not easy to find here.
About him: a couple of years ago, he wasn't on the list of Vasco's youth gems. Last year, however, when Vasco was playing the Serie B after being relegated in 2015, he stepped up in the first team and we discovered we had a fantastic player in our backyard. He is very technical, great pass and skill, and he's also good in defensive aspects - it's hard to get the ball from him, and, when he loses, he goes after it. But the main thing is: Douglas is a very intelligent player - he is/was "the brain" of Vasco's midfield and knows how to read the game and dictate its pace, and performs really well his tactical role in the midfield. As any youth player, he still lacks some maturity and consistency, but no doubt he is very gifted and has a brilliant future ahead.
What I sincerely don't understand is why he's accepted this transfer to play firstly for a year for Girona. I don't know if he would have space in City's midfield, so it looks like you're buying him to use him later. If he has plans of going to the NT (and maybe to 2018 WC), IMO, he should have stayed playing in Brazil or City could've loaned him to a club bigger than Girona, cause he surely has the football to play in a medium La Liga/Serie A team.
