Soccer sorrow
On a rainy Saturday that only accentuated the grief, 20,000 people filled a tiny stadium under umbrellas and plastic ponchos to say goodbye to members of Brazil’s Chapecoense soccer club who died in a plane crash.
The accident Monday in the Colombian Andes claimed most of the team’s players and staff as it headed to the finals of one of Latin America’s most important club tournaments. Seventy-one of the 77 people on board died, including 19 players on the team.
Rain-soaked mourners jammed the modest stadium with four or five times that outside — about half the population of Chapeco, the southern Brazilian city of 210,000 — to pay homage to a club that nearly reached the pinnacle of Latin American soccer.
“I’ve been here since early morning,” said 19year-old Chaiane Lorenzetti, who said she worked at a local supermarket fre- quented by club players and officials. “I’ll never see some of my customers again. It’s a devastating day that will last forever.”
Soldiers wearing berets carried the coffins into the stadium on their shoulders, sloshing through standing water and mud.
A tent stretched across the width of the soccer field, protecting the coffins. On top of the white tent, a sentence from the club’s anthem was written:
“In happiness and in the most difficult hours. You are always a winner.”
Family members and friends wept under the tents. Many hunched over the coffins with photos of the deceased placed on top or alongside as almost everything got splattered by the nonstop rain.
Brazilian President Michel Temer, who had not planned to visit the stadium for fear of being jeered, arrived after meeting the procession of the deceased at the airport. He was treated respectfully.