A year after Brazil's Chapecoense soccer club was all but wiped out in an air crash on their way to play the game of their lives, the team is winning again - and daring to think of the future.
Less than two weeks ago, the reconstructed team risen from the ashes of that tragedy, was celebrating victory that assured it retained its place in the Brazilian first division.
The new players and the survivors from the crash in the mountains outside Medellin once more filled the old changing room with laughter and chanting.
For sure, this remarkable comeback couldn't ever match the euphoria the Chapeco club exoerienced on Nov. 24, 2016, when the minnow of Brazilian soccer made history by reaching the final of the regional Copa Sudamericana.
For a humble, scrappy little club from southern Brazil, that night seemed a dream.
But five days later, the excited players and coaches flew to Colombia - and to their deaths when the plane ran out of fuel.
Of 77 people aboard, 71 were killed, including 19 players, 14 coaching staff, nine managers and 20 journalists.
The shock brought Chapeco to a standstill and might have seemed sure to finish the club. Yet the survivors decided they had to look ahead.
"We were determined to find a way of moving forward. There was a lot of pain, a lot of suffering, but we never thought of abandoning soccer," Nivaldo Constante, a goalkeeper who was not on the plane and retired after the crash, told AFP.
A last-minute change of plan saved Constante from boarding the fatal flight.
After the event, he felt destroyed by shock. But the new season was starting in a month and there was no one else to get the team going again.
Constante answered the call.
"We spent 20 days from eight in the morning to 10 at night running after agents and players until we finally managed to get together 22 players," he said. "It was very complicated but we managed to build a new team."
Three players survived the crash - goalkeeper Jackson Follman, Helio Neto and Alan Ruchel - although Ruchel is the only one who has been able to play again.
Several widows of players have been prominent in criticizing the club for not doing enough to remember the dead or to help the survivors, although the club leadership insists it is doing everything it can, while also pushing forward.
But the wider soccer world has not forgotten Chapecoense.
Ruschel was in the team when it played a charity match against mighty Barcelona, sharing the field with the likes of Lionel Messi and Luis Suarez on Aug. 7 in Camp Nou.
The three men hugged and chanted the club chant that once spurred them on in on-field heroics and now helps them get through the game of life itself: "Vamos, vamos, Chape!" - "let's go, let's go Chape!"
Rosa Sulleiro
Agence France-Presse/Sao Paulo
Less than two weeks ago, the reconstructed team risen from the ashes of that tragedy, was celebrating victory that assured it retained its place in the Brazilian first division.
The new players and the survivors from the crash in the mountains outside Medellin once more filled the old changing room with laughter and chanting.
For sure, this remarkable comeback couldn't ever match the euphoria the Chapeco club exoerienced on Nov. 24, 2016, when the minnow of Brazilian soccer made history by reaching the final of the regional Copa Sudamericana.
For a humble, scrappy little club from southern Brazil, that night seemed a dream.
But five days later, the excited players and coaches flew to Colombia - and to their deaths when the plane ran out of fuel.
Of 77 people aboard, 71 were killed, including 19 players, 14 coaching staff, nine managers and 20 journalists.
The shock brought Chapeco to a standstill and might have seemed sure to finish the club. Yet the survivors decided they had to look ahead.
"We were determined to find a way of moving forward. There was a lot of pain, a lot of suffering, but we never thought of abandoning soccer," Nivaldo Constante, a goalkeeper who was not on the plane and retired after the crash, told AFP.
A last-minute change of plan saved Constante from boarding the fatal flight.
After the event, he felt destroyed by shock. But the new season was starting in a month and there was no one else to get the team going again.
Constante answered the call.
"We spent 20 days from eight in the morning to 10 at night running after agents and players until we finally managed to get together 22 players," he said. "It was very complicated but we managed to build a new team."
Three players survived the crash - goalkeeper Jackson Follman, Helio Neto and Alan Ruchel - although Ruchel is the only one who has been able to play again.
Several widows of players have been prominent in criticizing the club for not doing enough to remember the dead or to help the survivors, although the club leadership insists it is doing everything it can, while also pushing forward.
But the wider soccer world has not forgotten Chapecoense.
Ruschel was in the team when it played a charity match against mighty Barcelona, sharing the field with the likes of Lionel Messi and Luis Suarez on Aug. 7 in Camp Nou.
The three men hugged and chanted the club chant that once spurred them on in on-field heroics and now helps them get through the game of life itself: "Vamos, vamos, Chape!" - "let's go, let's go Chape!"
Rosa Sulleiro
Agence France-Presse/Sao Paulo
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