The crash in Colombia of the chartered plane carrying the Brazilian club Chapecoense came at a time when many Brazilian fans were revelling in the team's ’s performance. Different from past South American tournaments in which some Brazilian fans actively rooted against prominent Brazilian teams like Flamengo or Corinthians because of simmering home city rivalries, Chapecoense seemed to unite Brazilians who ADMIRED THE CLUB’S sudden emergence as a regional contender.
The crash in Colombia of the chartered plane carrying the Brazilian club Chapecoense, the scrappy upstart team from a hum-drum industrial city, crushed the hopes of one of the most re-markable success stories of Brazilian football in recent memory.
AS RECENTLY AS 2009, Chap-ecoense was playing in the obscurity of Brazil’s fourth division, making few ripples even in its own nation’s vast football conversation. But a stunning climb up the ranks in recent years had placed them near the pinnacle of Brazilian football, challenging titans in a national sporting scene plagued by graft scandals, mismanagement and lingering dismay over the debacle of the national team’s loss to Germany at the 2014 World Cup.
IN SOUTHERN BRAZIL, the team was the pride of Chapeco, a staid city of 210,000 known for its food processing plants. Fans attributed Chapecoense’s ascent to prudent, transparent management, involving cooperation with local business leaders who helped pull the team out of a financial crisis during the past decade.
“Lots of football clubs in Brazil have problems in the way they are run, with corruption and bad management practices, but Chapecoense is different,” said Robero Panarotta, 44, a professor of media studies in Chapecó who lost a childhood friend in the crash, Chinho di Domenico, a member of the coaching staff.
“This is a relatively small city, so everyone knows somebody on the plane,” Panarotta said by telephone. “Everybody is shocked, and nobody really knows how to react. Nothing like this has ever happened here.”
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