Ex-Bundesliga professional in an interview
© Imago
What is he still playing? The reaction should be roughly so if the name Dante falls during the regular table discussion. Yes, it is still playing! The former Bundesliga professional, once active for Borussia Mönchengladbach, FC Bayern and VfL Wolfsburg, is captain and a regular at the OGC Nice at the age of 41. And soon he will go to his last season. As Dante managed to continue playing why in the summer of 2026 it is really over and what he is doing for the targeted coaching career, he reveals at the transfer market.
It was nine years ago that Dante left the Bundesliga. After his stations in Mönchengladbach, Munich and Wolfsburg, he moved to the French Mediterranean cunts to Nice. The Brazilian was 32 years old, i.e. at a point where quite a few professionals ended their career, will end or think about it. “Back then I didn’t think that I would still play at 41. If someone had told me that, I would have answered that this was nonsense,” he says. Today Dante in Europe’s top league is the only field player from 40.
Rather, the defender believed in summer 2016 “that I sign for three years and then maybe go back to Brazil”. He is still in Nice for more than 3,000 days later, in between there are more than 300 missions for the club, in which he was in the field for over 21,000 minutes. That is an average of around 33 games and 3,000 minutes a year. It would be even more if he hadn’t missed large parts of the 2020/21 season because of a cruciate ligament tear.
In 2002 Dante became a professional at the eSporte Clube Juventude in Brazil, when the transfer market was still in its infancy, the market values were not invented and Germany lost the World Cup final with national players such as Dietmar Hamann, Christian Ziege or Oliver Bierhoff and national coach Rudi Völler. Around 750 game reports with Dante accumulated in the TM database in 23 professional years, with the upcoming last season he should get close to the 800 mark. When asked whether he would call himself a football crazy, Dante says: “It is a feeling that I have in myself. Football arouses me the emotion of being happy in me. Even as a little boy, I was crazy about it. I always found it better to look at a game than to go to the cinema.”
When it went to Europe in 2004, Dante made a promise: “I said to myself: You give everything you can and you will stay until you can’t. And I was really serious. I went to this deal right at the beginning.” The first two years were the most difficult because he had to find his way around in another country with a different language. In 2009, he landed at Gladbach via the intermediate stations Charleroi and Liège, who paid 2.5 million euros. Dante stayed in Germany for seven years and played 269 games for Borussia, Bavaria and Wolfsburg.
Why FC Bayern was “just the right thing” for Dante
When the Munich hired him in 2012, they made use of an exit clause of 4.7 million euros and received it for less than his market value of 8 million euros at the time. “The transfer was not very high and that’s why people didn’t have so high expectations. But everything was right and we won everything in the first season. That was outstanding,” says Dante, who reached his personally highest market value of 17 million euros after the triple. A famous video also dates from this time, in which he sings the title gains (“We win ‘championship, we win’ Champions League – and Cup too”).
The change to FC Bayern was the reason that his senses sharpened. “I knew that if I wanted to be successful, I have to be more than 100 percent professional. I wanted to do everything for success. I paid attention to every little detail, for example good sleep and good nutrition,” says Dante. The mentality in the club was “exactly the right thing”: “My inner drive is always to win. I don’t want to work hard and then do not win. That’s why I quickly settled in and it was so good between us.” In his function as CEO, Karl-Heinz Rummenigge described Dante in 2014 as “one of our best transfers in the past years”. When asked about this statement eleven years later, the Brazilian reacts as follows: “It was a great honor to hear something like that. We always had a very good connection, my respect for him and also for his wife is huge.”
Dante as a master of longevity in professional football, who climbs one age group after the other, classifies the years between 27 and 31 as his “high phase”. So his end at Borussia Plus the time in Munich. “I was physically best on it. I had the feeling that I would check everything on the pitch and would not cause anything problems,” explains Dante, who switched to VfL Wolfsburg for 4.5 million euros in 2015 and was in Nice a season later.
When asked what the training focus is about in progressing age, explains: “At the beginning of the professional career, it is important to get stronger. Later it is more important to keep the speed as much as possible. From 30 years of age, I have to have less weight. The head must always be up to be able to make quick decisions. Played with your head, your legs are only the tool.
How often Dante thought of a career end
Dante has been captain since 2017, but his area of responsibility is also possible, as his nickname “Pai” reveals. It is the Portuguese word for “father”. Dante says: “I have always tried to improve my communication with the younger players. It is another generation. If you have given them something, you also have to know how you convey it to them. In this point I really developed myself because I understood what their mentality is, how they live, how they work, how they work.” He was “like a father for her” and really wants to “help them develop and get the best out of their career”. Nice would have the youngest team in the league without Dante, the youngest player in the squad is Amidou Doumbouya at the age of 17, also a central defender. “He could be my son,” laughs Dante, whose children Sophia and Diogo are 16 and 14 years old. In addition to Doumbouya, seven other teammates were not yet born when Dante started his professional career. Youssoufa Moukoko also includes.
In the usual manner: Dante with a grin on his face.
To announce his end of his career so far in advance, Dante also faces the club as a sign of respect. With the club he always reached a single -digit final placement in the nine years – the first and qualification for the Champions League jumped out in the first and in this. Meanwhile, Dante experienced seven different coaches, Lucien Favre twice and in the 2023/24 season with Francesco Farioli one who was younger than him. The club has enough time to “decide who should take my place,” says Dante. But personally he also consciously decided on this time: “After 23 years as a professional, I can’t stop from one day to the other. I would not know what to do. I would be lost. I think some players do a difficult time afterwards because they did not prepare properly. For me it is the best decision because I have the time to prepare my head and the next step.”
How many times did he think about it before? He says: never once. Also, he did not feel the desire for football in any of his approximately 8,400 days as a professional. But there is still one. “I would like to enjoy life and time with people a little more,” he says. “If a friend’s birthday or a family member, everyone is in a good mood, celebrate and drink wine, then I can’t really participate. I have to remain disciplined and I have to decide again and again at these moments.”
I have to thank you again and again.
The next step is a coaching career. Dante is about to acquire the UEFA Pro license. He played most of the games under Favre, even sizes like Pep Guardiola and Jupp Heynckes trained him. But how about Dante as a coach? “My goal would be that my players get up every morning and are happy to go to training. They should have the feeling: We always have fun with this trainer and we learn something. I want the joy in every training session. But of course I also strive for success and titles, I want to bring a clear idea and structure in.
Before that, however, Dante will be on the pitch for the last season and will even be seen in the Champions League in a successful qualification round. “I often remember that a lot of people would like to be in my position. I always have to thank you at football what he gave me again and again. And I can only thank you properly if I give everything every day,” he says at the end. When Dante thinks back to the deal with his 20-year-old I today, he is happy to have fulfilled everything about it.
Text: Pascal Martin