Dani Alves recently announced that he will return to football in 2022, and that he won’t be joining any other club right now. The player had his contract with Brazilian club Sao Paulo terminated earlier this month, due to financial issues mainly.
The Brazilian outfit promised him 1.5 million Reals per month as salary, which is huge by their standards. In the midst of the pandemic and the absence of supporters from the stands, Sao Paulo had to struggle massively on the financial front.
After failing to pay his salary on several occasions, Alves answered the call from the Brazil Olympics team and went to Tokyo to play in the Olympics. The right-back went on to captain the team to the Gold medal after defeating Spain in the finals. One of the reasons behind Alves abandoning Sao Paulo in the middle of the season was the frustration due to the missed payments of his salary.
“Sao Paulo failed me many times,” he said with the medal still around his neck, “and I don’t fail Sao Paulo.” He has been criticised for his decision to go and play the Olympics as the club struggled to finish in the top spots in the Brazilian league.
Eventually, Sao Paulo decided that they needed to be done with the 38-year-old and terminated his contract. They are now expected to pay 24 million Reals, a third of it being debt and the remainder of it a portion of his deal that was supposed to run until the end of 2022.
