La Union (Colombia): The football world mourned after a plane carrying a Brazilian team crashed in the mountains in Colombia, killing 71 people but miraculously leaving six survivors.
Football legends Pele and Maradona as well as current superstars Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo led tributes to the players of Chapecoense Real, a humble team whose march to glory was cut abruptly short.
“The pain is terrible. Just as we had made it, I will not say to the top, but to have national prominence, a tragedy like this happened,” club vice-president Ivan Tozzo told ‘Globo SportTV’. “It is very difficult, a very great tragedy.”
Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos called it a ‘sad tragedy’, and Brazil’s President Michel Temer declared three days of mourning. The dead also included 20 Brazilian journalists travelling to cover the match.
Specialist sites revealed that the same plane was used two weeks ago to fly the Argentine national team with Messi on board to San Juan, Argentina for a World Cup qualifying match.
Rescuers and aviation authorities said the survivors were three players, two crew members and a journalist. Authorities named the three players who survived as defenders Helio Neto and Alan Ruschel and goalkeeper Jakson Follmann.
The team’s lead goalkeeper Marcos Danilo Padilha, 31, died on the way to hospital. His last-minute save in the semifinal had ensured the team made it through to the Copa Sudamericana final.
The cup final first leg had been scheduled for Wednesday against Atletico Nacional of Colombia. In an emotional gesture, Nacional called in a statement for the title to be handed to their Brazilian opponents ‘as a posthumous homage to the victims of the fatal accident that has put our sport in mourning’.
Nowhere was the pain felt more than in the club’s home of Chapeco, a city of less than 200,000 people in Brazil’s southern state of Santa Catarina. Thousands of people gathered at the team’s Conda Arena clad in their green and white colors. Businesses and schools were closed while a monument honouring the first city settlers was wrapped in a black cloth.
Rival Brazilian clubs also showed their solidarity. Coritiba, Corinthians, Palmeiras, Portuguesa, Santos and Sao Paulo issued a joint statement in which they offered to loan players for free in 2017. They also called for Chapecoense to be exempt from relegation to Serie B for the next three seasons.
AFP
