Robinho, Alves & Antony - Brazilians who made headlines for wrong reasons

The allure of the Brazil team, with their iconic yellow shirts and samba football, remains powerful.

This Saturday night, 90,000 fans will pack Wembley Stadium to see how England measure up to the current Selecao stars.

But while the five-time world champions do indeed retain their global appeal, an increasing number of Brazil players past and present are making headlines for all the wrong reasons.

Recent days have seen Robinho sentenced to a nine-year prison term for gang rape, while Dani Alves faces four-and-a-half years behind bars for raping a woman in a nightclub toilet.

They are just the latest footballers from the South American nation to be engulfed in scandal.

ROBINHO

Beginning with the disgraced former Manchester City and Real Madrid forward, 40, who was told by judges on Wednesday he must serve a nine-year prison sentence in Brazil for his part in a group sexual assault in 2013.

Robinho, who played for AC Milan at the time, was one of six men found guilty in 2017 of gang raping a 22-year-old Albanian woman in a nightclub.

In January 2022, the Supreme Court in Rome dismissed his final appeal against the conviction.

Italian authorities had asked to extradite Robinho from Brazil to serve his sentence - while that won't happen, judges in Brasilia ruled he will be imprisoned in Brazil instead.

Robinho, who played 100 times for the national team, has insisted he is innocent and plans to appeal the decision.

DANI ALVES

That verdict came on the same day the ex-Brazil defender Dani Alves was released on a €1million [£850,000] bail after appealing his four-and-a-half year prison sentence for rape.

Alves, 40, one of the most decorated footballers of all-time, was found guilty last month of raping a woman in a Barcelona nightclub