Daniel Martín Alexandre (born 16 September 1981), known as Dani, is a Spanish former professional footballer who played as a striker.
His career was closely associated to Betis, for which he appeared in 115 competitive games (26 goals) and scored the winning goal in the 2005 Copa del Rey final.
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Club career
Born in Seville, Dani started playing professionally with his hometown club Real Betis, and started out with their reserves, a spell that included six goals in 27 games in 1999–2000 in the Segunda División B. On 4 November 2001, he made his first-team – and La Liga – debut, playing the second half of a 0–1 home loss against Real Zaragoza and finishing the season with 17 appearances and five goals.
After having missed most of the 2002–03 campaign due to a serious knee injury, occurred in April 2002 and relapsed in August, Dani was knocked unconscious during a league game against Deportivo de La Coruña in November 2003, and was unable to remember a disallowed goal he had scored earlier. However, he continued to grab important goals for the Andalusia side with relatively little playing time, most notably the extra time winner in the 2005 final of the Copa del Rey against CA Osasuna, adding the only goal in the 1–0 home victory over Chelsea in the group stage of UEFA Champions League. On 20 August 2005, his brace at the Camp Nou helped to defeat FC Barcelona 2–1 in the Supercopa de España, but the Catalans had already won the first leg 3–0.