Football’s most decorated player will now be
ASK any Barcelona supporter prior to December 2022 to name an all-time best team and Dani Alves would have been as certain to be in it as Lionel Messi, Andres Iniesta or Xavi.
He was Pep Guardiola’s first signing when he took over as manager in 2008 and would go on to win 26 trophies with the club, en-route to becoming the most decorated player in the history of the game.
Request a best XI now and there will be a nervous pause as an alternative right back is sought. Alves’ achievements as a footballer remain, but the sadness and repulsion invoked by his crime in the early hours of December 30, 2022, have left people wishing to erase his name from the collective memory.
It wasn’t just that he was an entertainer and winner on the pitch. Alves won over supporters with a larger than life personality.
That image has been shattered as the details have emerged of the Brazilian’s behaviour in the early hours of December 30 and by his subsequent conviction for the rape of a 23-year-old woman in the toilets of the VIP area of a Barcelona nightclub.
When he was first arrested and charged, former team-mates were stunned and desperate to disbelieve the worst. When first asked about his arrest, Xavi said: ‘I feel bad for Dani, because I know him. It surprises me because of how he always behaved when he was with us.’
Days later the Barcelona coach rectified his ill-chosen words, saying: ‘I was wrong to ignore the victim in what I said. These acts must be condemned, whether Dani or anyone else has done them. I apologise to the victim and the victims of all gender violence and rape.’
His apology came after he was heavily criticised for his remarks and because it very quickly became clear that Alves would be found guilty, as he was by a Barcelona court this week, sentencing him to four years and six months in prison.
He changed his story several times in the weeks leading up to the trial, while the victim’s account of events remained unchanged. She said she arrived at the nightclub with her cousin at around 3am and that they were invited, by a waiter, to Alves’ private booth.
At first the victim and her friend refused, but later agreed after Alves insisted. She said he then beckoned for her to join him in another room, which
once inside, she became aware was a small bathroom. She wanted to leave, but Alves prevented her from doing so. She told investigators he then groped her, tried to force her to perform oral sex on him, hit her when she resisted and finally raped her.
In her statement, leaked by Spanish television programme Vamos a ver, she said immediately after the attack: ‘I was going to leave first and he was at the door and told me, “You’re not going to leave, I’m going to leave before you”.’ The victim left the club, but broke down in tears and immediately reported what had happened to members of security. They called the police and she was taken to a sexual violence centre at the city’s Hospital Clinic. Alves left the nightclub straight after the attack. After his arrest, he told police he did not know his accuser but he would later change his story several times. He had travelled to Barcelona from the Canary Islands where he had been with his wife, Joanna Sanz, taking care of his mother-in-law, who was unwell. He met a friend for dinner in Barcelona and they went on to the Sutton nightclub, where the attack occurred. He later said he had gone to the bathroom in the nightclub and the victim arrived after him without anything taking place. When cameras inside the club revealed he had been in the bathroom for around 15 minutes and forensics found traces of his semen in there, he changed his statement again to claim consensual sex had taken place and that he had lied to hide the infidelity from his wife.
His last version of events was that he had been seriously impaired by alcohol. During the trial his wife stated that when he came home, he was so drunk he could not talk.
In January the player’s mother, Lucia Alves, posted a video on Instagram showing Alves’ victim enjoying herself with friends and family. The images had been extracted from the victim’s social media accounts and were designed to suggest she was suffering no psychological effects. It was one last sordid attempt to discredit her and save Alves from prison.
The 40-year-old, who was about to join Mexican side Pumas when he committed the crime — they immediately tore up his contract — will now appeal to Catalonia’s High Court, despite having received the minimum sentence.
In Spanish law the crime of sexual assault with penetration is punishable by between four and 12 years in prison and the prosecution requested a sentence of nine years.
It is understood that Alves being able to pay damages of €150,000 to the victim helped reduce his sentence, with several Brazilian media reporting the money was lent to him by his former team-mate Neymar. Alves has been locked up since January 2023 and so will have three years and five months left to serve.
Legal experts have suggested he could ask to finish the sentence in his home country, far from the city where he wrote his name in football’s history books and then committed a crime that will ensure he is remembered only with disgust and revulsion.