Opponents offer title to crash club
ATLETICO Nacional, the Colombian team that was to play Chapecoense of Brazil in the finals of the Copa Sudamerica football tournament this week, has asked the organisation in charge of South American football to award the trophy to Chapecoense, which had nearly all of its players and coaches killed in a plane crash late on Monday.
Nacional said in a statement on its website and its Twitter feed that it had requested that the South American confederation, CONMEBOL, cancel the two-leg finals and declare Chapecoense the champion of the tournament, South America’s second most prestigious club competition.
“Atletico Nacional calls on CONMEBOL to award the title of the Copa Sudamericana to Chapecoense for its huge loss, and in posthumous homage to the victims killed in the accident,” the team said in a statement.
The competition’s organisers acknowledged that the request had been made after the “unanimous agreement” of Nacional’s players.
On Monday, Chapecoense was flying to Medellin, Colombia, for the first leg of the finals when its chartered plane crashed on the outskirts of the city, killing nearly everyone on board.
The plane was carrying 77 people, and Colombia’s civilian aviation au- thority said that six people had survived the crash: three of the 22 players, two of the nine crew members and one of the 21 journalists accompanying the team.
The teams in Brazil’s first division released a “statement of solidarity” with Chapecoense, volunteering to lend it players for the 2017 season.
The teams a lso said that they had issued a “formal request” to t he Bra zilia n footba ll federation t hat “Chapecoense not be subjected to relegation” for t he next t hree years.
“It is a minimum gesture of solidarity that is at our disposal,” the statement read. “But it is endowed with the sincere objective of the reconstruction of this institution that Brazilian football has lost.”
Brazilian football officials ordered all games in the country canceled for a seven-day mourning period beginning Tuesday, and around the world, other teams and leagues offered moments of silence before matches and practice sessions.
Teams and players used social media to offer their condolences to Chapecoense, a minor regional club whose rise to the country’s top division had led it to be described as the Cinderella of Brazilian football. As recently as 2009, the club was playing in Brazil’s fourth tier.
Two years ago, it won promotion to the country’s top flight, and its berth in the Copa Sudamericana finals brought the promise of the biggest games in the club’s history.
Juliano Belletti, a former defender for Barcelona, Chelsea and the Brazilian nationa l team, said t hat t he club’s rise through the ranks had “brought joy and hope” to the entire countr y.
The Italian club Torino and the English powerhouse Manchester United also posted poignant condolences on Twitter.
Each club’s history includes its own air disaster: Torino’s team was decimated in 1949 when a plane carrying 22 players crashed into a mountain, and United met with a similar catastrophe in 1958 when 23 people died in a crash in Germany as the club returned from a European Cup game.
Late on Tuesday, it was reported that the Colombian civil aviation authority as saying that the team’s goalkeeper, Marcos Danilo Padilha, 31, died on the way to hospital after the crash. His last-minute save in the semifinal had sealed the team’s spot in the final.