For a time he was one of the most talented wingers in Spanish football. He played 48 games in the first division, scored 20 goals in 127 games with Granada and became international in lower categories. Dani Benítez’s life has changed a lot, especially after testing positive for cocaine in 2014.which forced him to stay away from football for two years, when he was suspended.
“That was not my last line”, confesses the footballer in an interview with ABC. “After testing positive, I received a two-year ban, Granada terminated my contract and I went to Mallorca. There I separated from my ex-wife and entered a period of six, seven screwed months, in which I consumed a lot of cocaine.” .
“It bothers me that they called me Dani Beefeater”
“I didn’t have a cocaine addiction. I had a general addiction. Alcohol, cocaine, partying… I spent more than 100,000 euros in all that time and, furthermore, the partner I had in the rental car business that we opened in Mallorca deceived me,” says Benítez. “I suffered from depression, completely. There came a time when I wanted to die.”
“Many times I would go to train after being there all night and the physique was there. There came a time when alcohol didn’t even affect me with everything I drank.. I was not an alcoholic, but I could drink a bottle of vodka calmly in one night and nothing would happen to me,” explains the winger.
Dani Benítez focuses especially on the issue of vodka: “It bothers me that they call me Dani Beefeater; What I drank was vodka, but I have never drunk gin. I don’t like. Really, it hurts me. If that nickname had been for vodka… They gave it to me when we were promoted to First Division in Elche, and there is ‘a son of a bitch’ from there who makes a montage with a bottle of Beefeater and my face on top of it, and that carries over to Granada. “To this day I don’t drink anything. I haven’t gotten drunk in years.”
“What did Clos Gómez want? For me to eat his eggs?”
During his time at Granada, he also suffered a three-month ban for throwing a bottle at Clos Gómez. “I know it was wrong, but I don’t regret it. I apologize publicly, but what did Clos Gómez want? What, furthermore, would eat his eggs? It turns out that the first time he whistles at us again after that, when I go to greet him he takes his hand away, so no, I don’t regret it,” he clarifies.
“I came from a broken family, I was a crazy goat and there was no one to draw a straight line for me. Well, what happened happened. I felt like Tyson, who once said in an interview that he aged too soon and matured too late. The same thing happened to me,” declares the former Granada player.
Dani Benítez also confesses to having been addicted to speed: “I loved speed. And I bought high-end cars. I played music at full volume and ran. It was a total disconnection. I would go in the afternoons or during my day free. To Malaga, for example, and I put the car at 300 km/h, and those who didn’t reach that, at 290, 280… Now I don’t even go over 115 km/h. What unconsciousness did. “He could have killed me perfectly.”
Among other things, the one who walked the sidelines of the Spanish soccer fields also recounts in the interview the beatings that his father gave him (with whom he has no dealings)cancer and the death of his mother, his divorce, his three children from three different women… An intense life.
