Bye, Dani. Thanks for your long and incredibly productive career with our club. Thanks for saving Barca by staying past the end of the transfer ban.
Smart move for him to leave now. Barca is not a good club for players late in their careers, Italy is definitely a better league for the last couple years at a high level. For the club, this frees a huge amount of salary, better spent on younger players. Almost every single Barca player, even including most of the legends, has to finish up his career at a lessor club, in a less demanding league. Alves is trying for the smallest possible step down in level, best of luck with that.
There is no replacing Dani Alves, they just don't make them like him. OK, we can hope that whoever takes over this spot can be better at covering the far post, this was always a problem for Dani. And maybe the new guy will be a more effective finisher, that would be quite helpful. His man marking was starting to decline, but the decline was from the level of best in the world. CR7 is happy today. Dani's ability to bring the ball upfield, to fully participate in the offense better than any fullback should be able to, to be the very best at ball recovery/stopping counters when he was way down in Barca's offensive end, Barca will just have to make do with less going forwards.