Chapecoense´s flight

[mrzz]

As you all may know, yesterday a plane crash killed around 75 people, including most part of a Brazilian football team called Chapecoense. They were from a small town down south called Chapecó. I happen to have a good friend from there, almost a brother, I am godfather to his daughter. He wrote me a message, which I will translate. He would hate me now if he knew I posted it, but it is a beautiful message, it shows the (for me) completely incomprehensible way sports move people. As any good piece of writing, it belongs out in the open, not hidden in a drawer, or in a single mailbox. I translated it to English, I might have made a mistake here and there. My friend´s name is Daniel.

"To begin with, Chapecoense´s nickname was always "Furacão do Oeste" [Western Hurricane]. I was born in 74 [Chapecoense was founded in 73]. December the eleventh, at 18:00 hours, a Chapecoense home match ended in victory. I was born. Fireworks and fireworks. The doctor told my mother that they were for me. My mother said they signaled the end of hard living. Hard living took a little longer to end. My father also took his time to show up. He was Chapecoense´s masseur. Obviously he knew shit about massage. He was there because he was part of the mass who helped the bourgeoisie found the team. When the match ended he went out to get drunk. He showed up a day later, with the match´s ball, and gave it to me. I guess it was the only present he ever gave me. I grew up looking at that ball. Chapecoense was the only link I had with my father. Today I feel he died again."

 

[Federberg]

Beautiful message indeed. They are now added to the pantheon of football teams that have been decimated in plane crashes. There's Man United, the Zambian national team and now these guys. I may well be missing more, but it's a truly horrible tragedy

 

[britbox]

Nice sentiments @mrzz , thanks for posting them and horrible for your friend - truly terrible news.

 

[mrzz]

Thanks Federberg and Britbox.

I always find a bit odd the world wide commotion some events get on the internet, but this time I had this indirect link with it that got me somehow. The team had quite a Cinderella story (I don´t know if that is being told over there), six years ago they were in the fourth division, reached first division year by year, and for the third straight year could keep on the first. Before that they were not even allowed to play fourth division, they had to win state´s championship first. Now they were about to play the final of south americas´ equivalent to the UEFA´s cup.

All of this in conjunction with one thing about football here in Brazil that might sound different, for example, to an American, used to the franchise/draft scheme of NBA and NFL. Here not only a kid may start on the base divisions of a football club and end all the way up in the professional team, but this is the rule, rather than exeption, in the country side. And it is the small clubs that feed the big ones with players, even if they do not have the structure. A big team can literally train thousands of kids (I guess that´s the same in Europe), but there are around 800 professional teams in Brazil, and these smaller teams get they´re big numbers from amateur and non-registered players: 12 million in total.

All this to say that this small town thing still was present in Chapecoense´s case. Of course they now have money and hire a lot of players from bigger teams, but they still had a few which literally came from the neighborhood. One of the survivors, for example, is the son of a local farmer, which probably still works the land with his own hands. I guess it is as close as a true Cinderella story as it is nowadays possible.

 

[britbox]

It's a great story @mrzz (the Cinderella part) and it's been reported worldwide from what I can see. On the disaster itself, There was a minute silence at the Liverpool/Leeds game in the British League Cup on Thursday... and I think that will be happening at matches across the globe over the next few days.

I didn't know the team's name to be honest when it happened, and I do dip into Brazilian football a little - I always had a soft spot for Flamengo (largely because I loved Zico and also remembering them shredding Liverpool in the early 80s in the then world club championship) and check on them periodically.

Terrible course of events and I'm sure Chapecoense will become a lot of peoples second team going forward.

 

[mrzz]

You mentioned the team´s name... it is one of those things that were supposed to be eternally regional. The city´s name (Chapecó) cames from an indian (tupi-guarani) name "Xapecó" (path to the crops or something like that, by the way don´t ask me how I know that). "Chapecoense" is the gentile (I guess I am using the right word) to describe someone from Chapecó. It is quite a funny name even in Portuguese.

I grew up in the same state where Chapecó is (even if 700 KM´s apart). I live in São Paulo for years now, and since the team was playing in the first division and doing well, it was starting to get in the conversation. I found it always a bit funny... as I said, it was one of those things I would never expect to see reaching national scale. Now it has reached international status, sadly for the wrong reasons, but it is still quite surreal to me to be talking with you guys about Chapecoense (even if I brought the subject, but it is on CNN anyway).

I guess we don´t have germans on this board, but I just happen to remember one player that got some attention exactly playing in Chapecoense, ended up in Germany, got double citizenship, and played in the German national team (around 2000 I would guess): Paulo Rink. Memory is a funny thing...

 

[brokenshoelace]

Edinson Cavani (PSG striker) received a yellow card for taking off his shirt to reveal a tribute message to the victims. What a load of shit.

 

[Billie]

Thanks for the stories about the club mrzz. What a tragedy. Hopefully the club will be resurrected again, even if it takes some time.

How are the survivors doing?

 

[britbox]

Edinson Cavani (PSG striker) received a yellow card for taking off his shirt to reveal a tribute message to the victims. What a load of shit.

You gotta wonder what planet some of these clowns administering sports are on.

 

[mrzz]

Thanks for the stories about the club mrzz. What a tragedy. Hopefully the club will be resurrected again, even if it takes some time.

How are the survivors doing?

Two are still in intensive care but it seems all of them will make it.

Yeah, the club will survive. It will probably grow. It is a pretty small club. indeed.

One Brazillian club, Internacional (world champions in 2006, if I am not mistaken), came low enough to try to use the accident to avoid relegation to second division.

Just a comment on Cavani, he´s from Uruguay. Uruguay, north-east of Argentina and South of Brazil (Chapeco is in Santa Catarina, south of Brazil) have basically the same geography, ethnic composition and cultural aspects.