Dani Alves: Ex-Barcelona and Brazil defender wins appeal as Spanish court overturns rape conviction

Former Brazil and Barcelona Dani Alves defender has won his appeal against a sexual assault conviction as a Spanish court overturned the ruling on Friday.

The 40-year-old former right-back was found guilty in February 2024 of assaulting a woman in a Barcelona nightclub on New Year’s Eve in 2022 and was sentenced to four years, six months in prison. He denied wrongdoing during the three-day trial.

He was released from prison in March 2024 while waiting for his appeal to be heard by a higher court.

That court ruled on Friday that there was “insufficient evidence” to rule out Alves’ presumption of innocence.

Alves won dozens of titles with elite clubs including Barcelona, Juventus and Paris Saint-Germain.

He also helped Brazil win two Copa Americas and an Olympic gold medal at the age of 38. He played at his third World Cup, the only major title he has not won, in 2022.

He was with Mexican club Pumas when he was arrested. Pumas terminated his contract immediately.

The Alves case was the first high-profile sex crime since Spain overhauled its legislation in 2022 to make consent, or the lack thereof, central to defining a sex crime in response to an upswell of protests after a gang-rape case during the San Fermin bull-running festival in Pamplona in 2016.

The legislation popularly known as the “only yes means yes” law defines consent as an explicit expression of a person’s will, making it clear that silence or passivity do not equal consent.

But the four judges of a Barcelona-based appeals court ruled unanimously to overturn the conviction.

In their ruling, they wrote that the testimony of the plaintiff “differed notably” from evidence of video footage taken before the woman and Alves entered the bathroom where she said he forced her to have sex without her consent.

If you have been affected by any of the issues raised in this story, help is available online at sky.com/viewersupport.