“Help I don’t want to die”, not something you’re accustomed to hearing from a footballer, especially when his team is about to play a major cup finals in a few days time. But that’s what survivor Jakson Follman recalls screaming as he saw his teammates bid farewell to the beautiful game in a rather tragic and unfortunate way. Everyone is definitely aware and about the plane crash disaster which crushed the Chapecoense team. That was a brief period when the whole world came in support of everything that was left of the club. It’s a beautiful thing, football. It can mend what politics, business, science and technology can’t. It united people all over the world and provided that emotional and even financial support which none of the above mentioned could.
It was great to watch Barça host Chapecoense at the Camp Nou as part of the Joan Gamper Trophy. Alan Ruschel, a survivor played the game and how he’d have wished that those watching him from the heavens joined him on the field. Nevertheless, it was a dream come true for him to share the field with some of the greatest players of this generation. He swapped shirts with Messi.He’ll look at it 20-30 years down the line and recollect how football was his escape route to rehabilitation. The scoreline might have been a one sided 5-0, but football was not a competition that day. It was something rather special. Disasters suck, wars suck. Thank God for football.
éstoessooraj 