A club reborn from tragedy
Amazing tale of one team’s recovery
SHIELDED by six police officers and shuffling along to a soundtrack of boos and condemnation, insults hurtle down at referee Ricardo Marques Ribeiro inside the tunnel at the Arena Conda stadium.
First the players confront Ribeiro, held back only by security forces. Now the official is harangued by finger-jabbing club men in tracksuits. The tunnel is also the media mixed zone, so next come the scolders from the press pack. ‘Filho da puta!’ (Son of a bitch) shouts one radio commentator.
Ribeiro’s crime? To award a penalty for Sport Recife in the seventh minute of added time. In doing so, he thwarted a victory for home side Chapecoense.
Beyond the bowels of the stadium, parents and children continue to bristle. They pause briefly to refuel with empanadas or churros, passing by the kiosks selling local beers.
Amid the fury and indignation, a rueful smile breaks out on the face of one supporter. ‘Maybe, just maybe, things are going back to normal after all,’ she says. ALMOST a year ago, on November 28, 2016, Brazilian top- flight side Chapecoense were on the crest of a wave. In the space of only five years, this modest club, founded in 1973, rose from Brazil’s fourth division in 2009 to the Serie A in 2014.
Having fluttered the hearts of a nation, now came their moment to conquer the continent. The final of the Copa Sudamericana, the second largest club tournament in South America, awaited for the first time. As the chant goes, this was the best trip they had ever been on.
Their challenge: a two- leg final against the Colombian giants Atletico Nacional. Having warmed up with a game against Palmeiras in Sao Paulo, Chapecoense t hen t ravelled to Colombia.
First, the club boarded a commercial flight to Santa Cruz de l a Sierra i n Bolivia. They then transferred to chartered LaMia flight 2933, carrying the club’s 68-strong party — an amalgamation of players, board members, coaching staff, office personnel and journalists — as well as nine employees from the airline.
On board, some players turned on music and retreated i nto t heir headsets. Others were more sociable, playing buraco, a rummy-style card game.
Defender Alan Ruschel recalls: ‘It was a happy moment for the whole team, we were making history for the club. We wanted to seize the day and win the title.’
The flight was early evening. Some fell asleep. Others drifted i nto day-dreaming, envisioning the title in their grasp and the fiestas that may follow. Eighteen days earlier, Lionel Messi and the Argentina squad flew on the very same plane after a World Cup qualifier.
Ten miles from their destination, players awoke with a jolt. The weather was steady enough, only a touch of gentle rain. But as the plane
The lights went out, engines shut off and we began to pray... I woke at hospital
cruised at 18,000 feet, two of the engines began to rattle and shriek. Then everything went quiet.
‘The lights went out, the engines shut off,’ says the former goalkeeper Jakson Follmann. ‘We heard only the wind. We began to pray. Then I woke up at hospital.’
At 9.58pm, the plane nosedived, crashing into the crown of Cerro Gordo in the Colombian mountains at 8,500 feet. The plane snapped in half. For 71 of the 77 people on board, it was the end.
IN Chapeco, an agricultural town of 200,000 inhabitants in the Santa Catarina state, news began to filter through. Adriano de Jesus, the brother of the club masseur Serginho, recalls: ‘At 2.45am, a player’s girlfriend called me and she didn’t know if it was true. She had seen it on Facebook. I told her I’d check. Surely it can’t be true?
‘I turned the TV on and tuned into Globo news channel. It said the plane had fallen and they didn’t know if anyone survived. We rushed to the stadium, the press started arriving, so did relatives, because the plane really had crashed. We were waiting for something — anything — to tell us our loved ones were OK. My parents always wake up at 5:30am to have some Mate tea, so I called my sister, who lives with them. I told her to prepare them for the worst.
‘ We didn’t know if anyone was alive. But it was a huge trauma. We waited three or four days as they searched the site and returned the corpses. There was a lot of wrong information, a lot of people throwing news about that was not happening. They killed one of the survivors about five times!
‘It was huge agony. Eventually, I managed to reach the doctors and he told me that there was no more hope, that only a few people had survived and the rest were gone.’
Ruschel and Follmann were the l ucky ones, along with central defender Helio Neto.
Follmann surrendered part of his right leg and he is now learning to walk again with a new prosthetic limb. He has lost his career but his life continues as a club ambassador. Ruschel is back playing.
‘One of my last memories,’ Ruschel begins, ‘Jakson asked me to change seats. I was sat at the back with the journalists. But he kept nagging me to come and sit with him, so I did. The person sat in my original seat died.’
Central defender Neto was the third player to survive and the last living person to be discovered amid t he wreckage. The emergency services found him battered by injuries to the head, thorax, lungs and legs. Upon crash landing, he clenched his jaw with such ferocity that his back teeth were shattered. Emerging from a nine-day coma, he has since made a stunning recovery.
On the weekend I visit, he is not feeling up to reliving his experiences. ‘ He i s starting to find i t more difficult,’ says the press officer. His friend, the former Manchester City