"Football doesn't save anyone, I'm here to proclaim Christ to you." Dani Alves has started again from this point, after closing a chapter in his life. Far from his career as a footballer, the glory of Barcelona and trophies, Brazil and an environment in which he had lost his way. After being released from prison, after being declared innocent by justice, while having served 14 months in prison for sexual violence, the former defender now travels the world in the role of an evangelical pastor. He does not deny the past, but has faced it. During his stop in Argentina, he talks about himself and the radical change he has experienced.
Dani Alves' message to Argentina
Dani Alves had lost his way, but he has found the right path again. The essence of his mission as an apostolic preacher is found in the sentence he utters a little later. "Argentina is a country with a special passion for football, but the time has come to change direction. I came here to proclaim Christ."
Between the sacred and the profane, football is exactly that: a pagan religion that worships its gods. And there, in that corner of South America, where there are still people who worship D10s, the former Pibe, it is not so unusual to feed the soul with a double faith. Then there is Messi, to whom the Brazilian dedicates a passage this time much more earthly. The reference is related to the way he was treated before the triumphs with the Argentine national team in the Copa America and then in the World Cup in Qatar. “They didn't treat him as he deserved”
And when asked the most expected question, he does not avoid the answer. A joke shows exactly who the former full-back is today, who as a footballer won all the trophies, but as a person risked losing just as many. Which is the best partnership: Messi-Jordi Alba or Messi-Dani Alves? "Definitely the first, they are both my friends... my best partnership is with Christ."
Prison experience: "True freedom is being freed from sins"
In his confession, Dani Alves also spoke about his more than a year behind bars. In January 2023, he was arrested and held in pre-trial detention. In February 2024, at the first instance of the trial, he was sentenced to four and a half years in prison for raping a girl in the Sutton discotheque in Barcelona, during the night of December 30 and 31, 2022. A month later, he left prison after paying a bail of 1 million euros.
In March 2025, he was acquitted on appeal by the Supreme Court of Catalonia because the testimony of the victim, a 23-year-old woman, was not considered “sufficient to uphold the conviction of the accused”. At the same time, the court noted “a series of gaps, inaccuracies, inconsistencies and contradictions regarding the facts” in the reconstruction of the event made by the investigators, based on the statements of the accuser. These statements were used by the Prosecution to even request that the sentence be increased to nine years in prison.
The declaration of innocence caused a lot of uproar, because during the process Alves himself changed his version several times: initially he denied having had sex with the victim, then claimed that they had been consensual, and later admitted to having committed sexual violence, saying that he was drunk.
The Brazilian recalled that experience, talking about physical freedom and spiritual freedom. You can be in a cell even when you are not in prison. And no, this is not a paradox. “Prison is just a physical place, true freedom comes from being freed from our sins. Sometimes we think we are free, but in reality we are more prisoners than free, because the greatest prison of the human being is sin.” This is the essence of Dani Alves’ new public activity: faith as a means of rebirth. Football was his job. Faith saved his life.
