Alves and Keita show humanitarian side

Barcelona’s summer signings Dani Alves and Seydou Keita are two players who can appreciate the lifestyles they are now leading after difficult starts in life and they have come together to support a charity calendar.
“With the little that we do we can help a lot and so the least we can do is put ourselves at the disposal of projects like this,” says Alves, who particularly hopes to raise aids awareness. “This is the type of illness that you come across a lot of time without knowing about it especially as it can be inherited from parents. The only thing you can do is be strong so as to cope with the negative aspects of life.
“You must never relax and take things easy because in life the most important is to be strong whether you are ill or not.”
Keita has been in Europe for ten years but he is still aware of the problems back home in his native Mali.
“I consider myself fortunate that nobody close to me has died from an illness associated with poverty but I am happy to help with things like this as these illnesses are present and causing a lot of pain. In Africa there are a lot of problems with malaria and we all have to help and do what we can do to eradicate it,” he said.
Both Alves and Keita have made impressive starts to their Barca careers, the Brazilian in particular has made the right-back position his own while Keita is keeping Yaya Toure out of the team in midfield.