Chapecoense Soccer Team’s Plane Crashes, Leaving Brazil Devastated

(By Simon Romero and Nicholas Casey.)

RIO DE JANEIRO – For climbing the ranks of Brazilian soccer, the team was on its way to face one of its biggest tests yet: a chance to win the final of the Copa Sudamericana, an international competition for South American soccer. But over the mountains near Medellín, Colombia, the plane carrying the members of Chapecoense, a soccer team from a scrappy industrial city in southern Brazil, made an emergency call on Monday night after experiencing an electrical failure, the authorities said. Moments later, it crashed into the mountains with 77 people aboard. The team accomplished a lot without relying on big-name superstars. Its top scorer, Bruno Rangel, was a 34-year-old journeyman with more than a dozen stops on his résumé. The team captain, Cléber Santana, 35, had plied his trade all over Brazil and also in Spain. Both were killed, according to an official list of the dead that was confirmed by the team. The final of the Copa Sudamericana was to be held over two legs, first in Medellín and then in Brazil, in the southern city of Curitiba. The matches were to have been the biggest in Chapecoense’s history by a long way. Authorities are also investigating possible human failure.

(Available: http://www.nytimes.com.)

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