Dani Alves is a professional footballer from the South American country of Brazil, famous for producing extremely talented and gifted footballers, who currently plays for the giants of Spanish football as well as one of the greatest club teams ever to grace the football field, Football Club Barcelona.
He has made his position in the right defensive wing as one of the most attacking positions in world football, his marauding runs have been the bane of many a club side including the likes of Manchester United, one of the most well oiled units in world football, who Barcelona beat twice in the Champions League finals in three years, primarily due to the rampaging runs of Alves along the right wing that unsettled the shape of the United back four.
Before he joined the all conquering Barcelona in 2008, Dani Alves was part of the Sevilla side that won back to back UEFA Cups under the management of Juande Ramos as well as the Spanish King’s Cup or the Copa Del Rey. Seeing his performances for Sevilla as well as his outstanding displays for the Brazilian national team, Barcelona paid Sevilla a staggering sum of € 32.5 million, which is till date, the most amount of money ever paid for a defender, to secure his services in 2008.
In his very first season at the famous Nou Camp of Barcelona, Alves won the Spanish League, the Spanish King’s Cup and the UEFA Champions League final defeating Manchester United at Rome to win the first ever treble in his career and he further went on to win the Spanish and European Super Cups as well as the Club World Cup to cap off an amazing season for Barcelona as well as himself when he won all the six trophies in which the team participated in. Born on the 6th of May, 1983 in the Juazeiro region of Brazil as Daniel Alves da Silva, his skills as a footballer caught the eye of everyone when he was very young and the young Dani Alves was invited to a trial for his local club EC Bahia and he quite easily made the cut at the academy. He played for two seasons with Bahia before Sevilla came calling and Alves moved to Europe. His six years at Sevilla were some of the best moments in his life when a Sevilla team full of potential managed to overcome all the odds to become a major force in Spanish football.
The day he announced that he was leaving Sevilla to join Barcelona, Dani Alves was moved to tears and in that very same press conference, he proclaimed that he would love to come back to the city and play for Sevilla once again. Although it took him sometime to settle in at Barcelona and adapt to their style of play, Alves quickly became one of the mainstays of the side under Pep Guardiola and since then, he has been rated as one of the best right backs of all time, alongside Carlos Alberto Torres and Gary Neville. Still only 28 years old, Dani Alves has time on his side that will help him to become one of the legends of the game, let alone in his position only and it is all in his hands whether he will be considered as a legend or the one with the potential that didn’t quite make it.