Chapecoense

Day -562. #WorldCup2018

When I woke up this morning to the news of the plane crash in Medellin and that the Brazilian football team Chapecoense were on the plane, my first thought was not that footballers had died, but that a plane crash had, sadly, claimed the lives of so many people.

As I read more about it during the day, the sadness increased. As a football fan, a sports fan, there is an emotional connection. It was such a fairy tale story with the most tragic of endings. The unheralded team, from the small city had made it to the big time and were about to play for the biggest prize in their short history.

As much as it is of little comfort to the distraught families right now the reaction of the football community has been touching and poignant. Chapecoense's opponents in the Copa Sudamericana final, Atletico Nacional, have requested that Chapecoense be named the competition winners. All the teams in the Brazilian first division have offered to lend players to Chapecoense for them to carry on playing this season. They have also asked the league to not allow Chapecoense to be relegated for the next three years.

On a sad day it is maybe scant consolation to remember how this team from almost nowhere made it to this, now fateful, moment. In the semifinal they upset a traditional South American powerhouse, San Lorenzo of Argentina. You cannot but feel sadness watching their joy at their victory. They were within a stretch of a goalkeeper's foot in the 94th minute of the second leg of the semifinal of not being in this final. That hero, that goalkeeper, Danilo, was reportedly rescued from the wreckage but died later in hospital. I can't think what else to say....one last great save, Danilo, one more.