'Put the egos to one side' - Dani Alves and PSG's drive for Champions League glory

In a glittering career, Alves has won the Champions League three times with Barcelona and reached another final with Juventus.

He is a veteran now, his 36th birthday falling several weeks before this season's final, and he is conscious of what players like him and goalkeeper Gianluigi Buffon, now 41, can add to a PSG squad already featuring Neymar and Kylian Mbappe.

"We know how to win and how to lose. What we try to transmit to the others is that either we all go together in the same direction, or we leave the doors open to a defeat," Alves tells AFP in an exclusive interview.

He is speaking at the club's training ground in the upmarket Paris suburb of Saint-Germain-en-Laye, 48 hours before their last 16, second leg at home to Manchester United.

The mood is relaxed, with confidence high in Paris that Thomas Tuchel's side will make good their 2-0 first-leg win last month, achieved without Neymar and Edinson Cavani, the two superstars both out injured.

"This is not a competition that depends only on one player having a spectacular day," he insists.

"When you have experienced players, you don't tremble when it comes to playing in a hostile atmosphere, or under pressure."

- 'The right side dishes' -

In his first campaign at PSG last season, they were knocked out at this stage by Real Madrid, the first time Alves had not been involved in the quarter-finals of the Champions League in a decade.

It was an enormous disappointment for Paris and their Qatari owners, who had just paid the two biggest transfer fees in history for Neymar and Mbappe.

"I always talk about how we have special players here, like 'Ney', like Kylian, like 'Edi', who at some point can make the difference, and we have to help them," Alves says.

"Otherwise it would be like having a big meal without the right side dishes, and it wouldn't have the same flavour."

But what dish would he be?

"I'd be the fish, with the calm head, but at the same time..."

He uses his hands to motion a fish swimming through the water, the gesture suggesting a playful element, a touch of madness mixed with the intelligence.

Alves, a brilliant full-back with limitless energy, has recently been reinvented as a midfielder, fully recovered from the knee injury which saw him miss last year's World Cup.