Chapecoense: Brazilian team prepare for first game since plane crash

Posted Saturday, January 21, 2017 by BBC.com

Sirli Freitas took one, final phone call from her husband Cleberson Silva before he had to switch off his phone.

"There was so much background noise," she said. "So much laughter and fun.

"I said, 'are you really on a plane, or in a bar?'"

Journalist Silva was on a plane that went down in the Andes on 29 November. He was one of 71 people who died along with almost the entire Chapecoense football team.

The players were en route to the biggest match in the club's 43-year history, the final of the Copa Sudamericana against Colombia's Atletico Nacional.

On Saturday, Chapecoense will play their first match since the crash - a friendly against defending Brazilian league champions Palmeiras.

The people of Chapeco will, once-again, fill the small Arena Conda to see some of the 22 new players who make up the squad.

Three of the six survivors were players, including central defender Neto, who was one of the team's leaders.

He lay for six hours, trapped beneath the fuselage and trees, before being the last to be pulled out.

Remarkably, he's already started walking without crutches.

Sirli Freitas' husband died in the Andes plane crash

"I remember the lights went out suddenly, then I started praying, asking God to help us," he said. "But a lot of people thought the plane was just landing, because it was not an abrupt fall.

"I remember the moment that I couldn't hear the plane engine anymore. It was just the wind, and then an alarm.

"But no-one got desperate, there was a lot of people praying. These are the last memories I have."

When Neto woke up in hospital, he was told he had been injured in the match because nobody knew quite how to break the news to him.

But the truth dawned on him when there were no video clips of the match or evidence of his injury.

Chapeco is a quiet, unassuming city with an air of settled contentment. Its population of about 209,553 is only slightly higher than the number of people who crammed into the Maracana Stadium to watch the 1950 World Cup final between Uruguay and Brazil.

But they form a tight-knit community, and a major part of that is the Chapecoense football team.