Xavi knows his first signing better than anyone. That is why he wants to rejoin Barça. Because it will bring virtues that are lacking in the squad to recover the team.
Energy. Strength. Aggressiveness. Rhythm. Unpredictability Charisma. Joy. Experience. Loquacity. Nerve. Personality. Competence. All those ingredients, and a few more, Dani Alves will inject Barça. The mix of elements that will deliver the dose of adrenaline to a team that needs an immediate reaction.
Xavi knows Alves better than anyone. Were 7 seasons together (2008-15) and they shared the same parcel of the field, the right flank that completed a certain Messi. The Brazilian will have lost faculties, at the age of 38, but none of those that Barça needs now. Virtues that none of his pupils, individually, can offer Xavi.
Alves left with 33 years and his reincorporation at 38 indicates the decline of Barça during this five-year period; not only because of the football loss he hopes to recover from Alves, but because he can only access free reinforcements of testimonial and performance variables. Economic conditions that very few players would accept, unless they are free verses such as the defender, who has confirmed with his act of offering himself that it is culé like few others. Something that he has been declaring while he was, when he was about to leave (2015) and when he really left in 2016.
Fly down the road
Free left, after completing one last season of the two that he signed to help Barça due to the FIFA sanction that prohibited him from signing. He landed on the Juventus, but it only lasted a year. He made a commitment to Manchester City, but he swerved and stayed halfway, in the Paris Saint Germain, to play with Neymar. Two years, before returning to Brazil to fulfill the promise to his father, Domingos, that he would play with the tricolor jersey of the São Paulo, whose is it fan since his poor childhood in Juazeiro, in the north of Bahia.
“One of the greatest presentations in the history of Brazilian football,” defined the São Paulo press about the 45,000 fans gathered at the Morumbí stadium. Alves reactivated the fallen tricolor crooked, who had not celebrated anything since the 2012 South American Cup. They gave him the number 10. A declaration of intent. Dani promised what he does best: win titles.
Alves took 10 at Sao Paulo, won another title and left, hurt by the money owed him
In the tricolor reconstruction process, Fernando Díniz was signed, a young coach, radical in possession football and who had already been called the Brazilian Guardiola because of his conception of the game, not because of his record. There was chemistry between a relatively novice coach and an Alves marked by Blaugrana DNA that the best Barça in history tattooed on his skin.
As the Saopaulinos had just signed ex-colchonero Juanfran, Alves went on to play the Brazilian classic 10, leading the offensive game. His tactical libretto and improved passing quality sustained his reinvention as a 36-year-old midfielder. He helped clean the locker room, raised the competitive level and lowered the fumes some cocky youth squad with the complicity of his coach.
He played 95 games between the ages of 36 and 38, as proof of his excellent physical condition
A countercultural footballer
Dani was not the idol in the molds that the elitist and impatient crooked tricolor expected. His statements were interpreted as an act of arrogance. Alves was countercultural. His frenzied activity on social networks caused the same stupor that Barcelona fans sometimes had at 9,000 km. away.
The 2020 season, choppy by Covid-19, had to be the one of its consecration. Sao Paulo was the leader of Brasileirao, but in hour H it collapsed: it only added 2 points out of 18 possible. Flamengo was two-time champion and Sao Paulo fourth. Everything went wrong there.
Promise kept
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Hernán Crespo (another technician of the new batch) arrived, returned Alves on the side, and faced the Paulista Championship as if it were the Libertadores. He won in the final at Palmeiras and ended with a nine-year wilderness journey. La torcida celebrated it such that it was one of the titles of the glorious era of Telé Santana. Alves had fulfilled (to be champion as in his previous clubs) and he felt liberated.
The attrition with the board, who wanted to get rid of their star because he was the best paid, became unsustainable. Despite the 95 games (which explains his extraordinary physical condition from 36 to 38 years old), 10 goals and 15 assists. The leaks damaged his image. He won the Olympic gold and in September he said enough, wounded. They owed him 3 million euros. He decided to return to the place where he always felt loved. To Barça. It is love, not money.
Reference-www.elperiodico.com