Reaction: ‘The whole country . . . the whole world, everybody is so sad’

Hours after a chartered flight crashed and killed nearly all the players and staff of a championshipbound Brazilian soccer team, its Toronto counterpart mourned the loss of fellow athletes.

Chapecoense, a minor regional club whose meteoric rise from the country’s fourth division in 2009 to its top tier in 2014 earned it the reputation as the Cinderella of Brazilian soccer ¯ was travelling to Medellin, Colombia, for the first leg of the final of the Copa Sudamericana, South America’s second most prestigious club competition.

Its plane went down on the outskirts of the city early Monday; 75 of the 81 people on board were killed. The six survivors include three players, two crew members and a journalist.

News of the crashed stunned Toronto FC, a club one day out from its biggest game in franchise history, the second leg of Major League Soccer’s Eastern Conference championship against the Montreal Impact.

Coach Greg Vanney, who played professionally before becoming a manager, said the possibility of a crash can cross athletes’ minds given how often they travel. TFC has flown to all of its 21 away games this year.

“It’s a sad day whenever this happened but, for sure, when it’s a soccer team that’s travelling to games, then it hits home a little bit, just because it’s something that we do on a regular basis,” he said.

The sorrow was also shared by local athletes in other disciplines.

The news hit Brazilian Toronto Raptors centre Lucas Nogueira with a ferocity he has seldom felt. He spent much of Tuesday checking a group text message conversation with his “soccer friends” who he said knew every player on the plane.

“Tomorrow they were about to play the . . . most important game of their life,” Nogueira said. “It’s very sad. One team who was in the bottom forever and the last three years they build and build and build the team and the organization and the city, everybody together, they build an elite team, play in the first division, play in important tournaments, right now, tomorrow. And now see some- thing like that happen is very sad. The whole country, not the whole country but the whole world, everybody is so sad.”

TFC’s Jonathan Osorio is of Colombian descent, so the midfielder understands South America’s soccerobsessed culture. He was in touch with some of his family members in Colombia Tuesday and believes the whole continent is reeling from the crash.

He’s also certain the worldwide soccer community will pull together in support of Chapecoense.

It had already started Tuesday, with heartfelt social media post, the teams in Brazil’s first division volunteering to lend the club players for the 2017 season and Atlético Nacional, the Colombian team it was to play in the final this week, asking the South American confederation, CONMEBOL, to posthumously award the trophy to Chapecoense.

The Reds will do their small part Wednesday, with a moment of silence before their match against Montreal, Osorio said.

“Everybody that’s a part of football is mourning with this team.”