Brazil’s Dani Alves: From Grass to Fuffiling the Dream of a Nation

 

 Dona Lucia Ribeiro was watching with incredulity at her home in north-east  Brazil when her son picked up a banana from the side of the Villarreal pitch in Spain and ate it in front of millions.

The pre-planned act of defiance by Barcelona defender Daniel Alves in the face of racist abuse went viral in April, sparking debate even within his own family.

‘I was shouting, “don’t eat it”,’ Dona Lúcia said, wringing her hands with mock despair. ‘If he’d told me this idea before, I’d have said don’t eat it because it’s dangerous – it could have been spiked.’

Experience: Dani Alves is the most capped outfield player in Brazil squad

With Brazil about to host the World Cup and Alves the most capped outfield player in the squad, the whole country pulled behind the popular right-back, including President Dilma Rousseff, while the ugly issue of racism in football was once again in the spotlight.

But for those who know him best, the banana-eating stunt showed Alves at his most natural – simple, sanguine and playful, qualities he has displayed since a boy.

He may now be one of the world’s most expensive defenders but Alves’s roots were planted in the remote fields of the countryside, where his character was formed by his father, Seu Domingos.

One of five, Alves grew up working alongside his father on the dry land of Salitre, a poor, rural region in Bahia that was once the gateway to the slave trade in Brazil.

‘It was a hard life, difficult but happy,’ said Alves. ‘Despite working in the field, planting things with the sun at 40 degrees, we were happy.’ He describes himself as being a ‘goat from the countryside’.

‘He would work all day on the farm, arrive back at 5pm and pick up the ball to play football,’ said his mother. ‘He and Domingos were always together.’

 

Controversy: Dani Alves and the banana incident this season

The family grew melons, tomatoes and onions on rented land in the village of Umbuzeiro, where the earth turns orange under the baking sun and the roads are dusty tracks.

And it was here that Seu Domingos set up a football team, taking part in village championships on parched pitches with goals made of branches.

They could hardly have imagined that, 20 years later, there would be a picture of Alves and his Barcelona team-mates hanging on the wall of the family’s bungalow where his uncle and aunt still live amid roaming goats and mud houses. In Alves’s old bedroom, the same concrete divan beds lay beneath the exposed tiled roof that lets in sunlight.

‘The house was simple but one of the best around. When it rained, the water did not fall through,’ said Alves. Elias João, who played against Alves when they were children, described how the climate made conditions difficult for those living off the land.

‘The river dried up when we were children and when the river dries up, everyone suffers a lot,’ he said. Despite Alves’s reported £5million-a-year salary and a new family home in a gated community in the nearby town of Juazeiro, his father still farms land near the ground that created him in Umbuzeiro.

Climbing down from his tractor after a hard day on the farm, Seu Domingos heaved a sack of onions into the back of his pickup. ‘Daniel has raised the value of bananas. I might start growing them,’ he joked, smiling under his straw hat.

But he had no idea Alves had suffered racism until he spoke out after the banana incident.