Rival teams offer loan players to stricken club

Brazil’s top flight football teams have offered to loan players to Chapecoense for next season after the small southern club lost almost all its players in a plane crash in Colombia.

The teams on Tuesday also asked the Brazilian Football Confederation (CBF) to give Chapecoense a threeyear exemption from relegation - the process through which teams are assigned to a lower classification if they do not perform well.

The Brazilian team was on its way to Medellin to play Colombian side Atletico Nacional in the final of the Copa Sudamericana, South America’s equivalent of the Europa League, when its plane crashed into a hillside on Monday night.

‘‘It is the minimum gesture of solidarity that is within our reach at this point in time but it is borne of the sincerest desire to reconstruct this institution and that part of Brazilian football that was lost today,’’ the statement said.

The CBF did not immediately respond to the offer.

The final was cancelled and all games scheduled for the upcoming week in Brazil were postponed.

Colombian club Atletico Nacional publicly asked the South American football federation CONMEBOL to award the Copa Sudamericana to Brazilian rival Chapecoense after most of the team’s players were killed in a plane crash.

Chapecoense had been en route to Medellin to play Atletico Nacional when the team’s plane went down.

‘‘Atletico Nacional asks CONMEBOL that the Copa Sudamericana title be awarded to the Chapecoense Football Association as a laurel in honour of its great loss and a posthumous homage to the victims of the fatal accident that has left our sport in mourning,’’ read a statement on the club’s website.

‘‘As far as we are concerned, Chapecoense will forever be the champions of the Copa Sudamericana 2016.’’