MOVING ON WITH HOPE
Brazilian club returns to field with new team seven weeks after tragic plane crash took lives of 19 of 22 players
Barely seven weeks later, life moves forward.
The Brazilian soccer club Chapecoense played its first match on Saturday since the crash of LaMia flight 2933 — a charter plane bound for the Copa Sudamericana finals in Medellin, Colombia, on Nov. 28, killing 71 of the plane’s 77 passengers, including 19 of the team’s 22 players.
The three players who survived the crash were in attendance when Chapecoense faced Brazilian league champion Palmeiras in a friendly in Chapeco, and each of them took part in an emotional pre-match ceremony in front of 20,000 fans.
“I will be here to give support to the players that come,” defender Neto, one of the survivors, said on Friday, according to the Associated Press. “It’s not easy to represent all those who died, but I want to be fit to play so I can be more than a symbol. I want to make a real contribution.”
Neto lifted the Copa trophy — which was awarded to Chapecoense with opponent Atletico Nacional’s approval after the November match was cancelled — and family members of the victims were awarded medals on Saturday.
Neto recently took his first steps after spending more than 10 hours in the wreckage before he was rescued. Indeed, he hopes to play again, adding: “If I didn’t believe I could recover, I will get depressed.”
Goalkeeper Jakson Follmann had part of his right leg amputated, and reportedly is considering accepting a position on the team’s coaching staff. He told doctors during his recovery “I choose life over the leg.”
Winger Alan Ruschel also has said he “will do all that I can to play again” and expects to be back on the pitch within six months. In a tearful press conference this week, he admitted he has no recollection of the crash.
“I was in the front seats, then I changed with a friend of ours that is now gone,” Ruschel said. “I am pretty sure that that made me survive, because our goalkeeper Jakson Follmann was next to me and he also escaped. It was Follmann who told me to sit next to him, so I guess he also saved my life. I will have to live with this feeling forever.”
Like Marshall University football, which lost its entire 75-person traveling party in a 1970 plane crash, and Lokomotiv Yaroslavl, the Russian team in the Kontinental Hockey League that perished in a 2011 crash, Chapecoense has decided to continue on.
Its 2017 slate includes remaining in Brazil’s first division and participating for the first time in the Copa Libertadores, considered South America’s premier tournament. The club also will host several marquee friendlies to raise funds, featuring one against FC Barcelona.
Another crash survivor, radio broadcaster Rafael Henzel, also was in attendance on Saturday. In fact, he called the match.
“When I woke up at the crash site, I became aware of what had happened. Initially, I thought I was dreaming but then, shortly after, you start to realize that the plane had crashed,” said Henzel, who spent 20 days in the hospital with seven broken ribs and other injuries, including a broken leg. “The stairway at the Arena Conda is very steep, but I have extra motivation to be in that stadium again and see players wearing our shirt, the fans. It won’t be that stairway that will stop me.”
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