FCBARCELONA.CAT

30.12.2009 14:24

Alves: "We want to write more pages in this book"

Pau Ramírez

Dani Alves says that the Barça players “want to write more pages” featuring trophies after the triumphs of 2009. "We’ll do everything we can to make sure that this book has more than one page,” he promised.

Along with Milito and Maxwell, Alves is one of the players who decided to come back early from the holiday time allotted to them by the club in order to be available for Saturday’s game against Villarreal. “We’ve achieved some really important stuff, but now we’ve got to keep on working hard and improving things,” he said, before adding on a humorous note that “as we’ll have players away at the African Cup of Nations and I was missing my teammates, I decided to come back early.”

Faith in the academy

Alves is not worried about the players the team will be missing for their next game and says he has great faith in the reserve team players who train with the first team squad and could get some match time in forthcoming fixtures. "I always say it’s not the quantity but the quality of players that matters, and we’ve got a lot of that,” he argued. “The young players who come through are also very good and we’re very happy with them since they help us out and whoever plays we always have to show how good Barça can be."

Ready for a busy January

Dani Alves also spoke about next month in which Barça could play up to nine games. "We’re hoping to start the year well, like we finished this one,” he commented. “We need to be ready because January will show us how far we can go in the King’s Cup."

No fear of relaxing

The Brazilian international doesn’t think the team is going to relax after winning six titles in 2009. "We don’t know how things will go, but with the coach we’ve got there’s no way we’re going to relax,” he pointed out. “There’s the experience of 2006, plus we need to improve, since if we don’t we’ll be caught by other teams, so we need to work hard to stay on top."