Santos president Jose Carlos Peres has said his club failed with an audacious attempt to sign Neymar on loan from Paris Saint-Germain this summer.
Neymar, 27, is being linked with a return to Barcelona after a rocky two-year spell in France, but Peres told Globo Esporte (h/t Sport) he tried to bring the Brazilian back to his previous home.
He said: "That was a possibility. It was complicated, of course, but it was an option. We tried to bring him here for six months until December. We spoke with people close to his father, but it wasn't possible.