Plane Carrying Soccer Team from Brazil Crashes in Colombia

A chartered plane carrying Brazilian soccer team Chapecoense crashed near Medellin, Colombia.

Specialist sites revealed that the same plane was used two weeks ago to fly the Argentine national team with Messi on board to San Juan, Argentina for a World Cup qualifying match.

A horrific plane crash in Colombia left 71 people dead Monday night, including members of a professional Brazilian soccer team. Most of the bodies were found in the fuselage and the rest were located in the area were the six survivors were found, according to Aeronáutica Civil, Colombia’s civil aviation authority. Among the survivors, Chapecoense defender Alan Ruschel was in the most serious condition, and was later transported to another facility to undergo surgery for a spinal fracture.

“I just hope they stick to what they’re saying once the emotions are gone and they are rational again”, he added. “They told me they were going in search of the dream, to make this dream a reality”.

The team was scheduled to play Wednesday in the first of a two-game Copa Sudamericana final against Atletico Nacional of Medellin.

And teams as far away as the United Kingdom took to social media to send condolences to the small Brazilian city and their beloved home team.

“As far as we are concerned, Chapecoense will forever be the champions of the Copa Sudamericana 2016”.

“It was South America’s Cinderella – nobody could have predicted this macabre ending”.

OSBORN: And this year the team’s focus, an aggressive attack, got it to its first final match in an global tournament scheduled for tomorrow night in Medellin, Colombia.

News of the crashed stunned Toronto FC, a club one day out from its biggest game in franchise history, the second leg of Major League Soccer’s Eastern Conference championship against the Montreal Impact. Even at this point Chapecoense was nearly ignored by its own public, with only about 7,000 people turning up to home games, according to Globoesporte website.

LaMia, the Bolivian operator of the crashed plane, said on its website – which has since become inaccessible – that its three BAE 146s had a maximum range of around 2,965 kilometers. In Colombia, we were rooting for the other team.

DAL PIVA: We were many times playing against soccer teams that were more traditional, with more money, with better infrastructures. “It is very hard, a very great tragedy”, club vice-president Ivan Tozzo told SporTV. “Only God can give us strength”.

His last-minute save in the semi-final had ensured the team made it through to the Copa Sudamericana final.

On social media, haunting last photos showed the smiling players boarding the flight to Colombia for the first of two matches against Atletico Nacional.

Chapecoense had captured the imagination of football fans across Brazil with its meteoric rise from the fourth division to Brazil’s Serie A.

Fox lost six journalists, including commentator Mario Sergio Pontes de Paiva, a former midfielder who played briefly for Brazil’s national team in the early 1980s, and who coached for several Brazilian clubs, most recently Internacional in 2009 and Ceara in 2010.

Alejandro Martinuccio, a Chapecoense player who has been sidelined through injury and was not on the flight, said: “I feel profound sadness”.

Brazilian soccer legend Pele said on Twitter that Brazilian football is in mourning. That’s especially the case for members of the soccer team.

This week’s crash is not the first time a football team has been involved in an air disaster.

The plane has four jet engines suspended from a wing affixed to the top of the plane.