Heartbreaking stories are emerging from the Colombia plane crash that killed 76 people including all but two members of the Brazil football team, Chapecoense.
The plane was travelling from southern Brazil to the biggest game in the club’s history – Wednesday’s first leg of the Copa Sudamericana final – when the chartered plane went down in a mountainous rural area outside the city of Medellín, Colombia.
Dozens of rescuers working through the night pulled seven passengers alive from the wreckage, including three members of the team, Chapecoense defender Alan Ruschel and two goalkeepers, Marcos Danilo and Jackson Follmann.
As they rushed the survivors to hospital the thoughts of the men were only with their families.
Alan Ruschel, asking for his wedding ring to be looked after and Marcos Danilo – a national hero in Brazil – asking to speak to his wife on the phone.
Just moments before the crash Danilo and Ruschel, who sat together had posted a video on Snapchat of the excited plane, nearing its destination.
Brazilian media report that tragically Danilo died in hospital, but first he managed to speak to his wife, who weeks earlier he had posted a dedication on Instagram calling her “my love.”
His death brings the death toll to 76, leaving only six survivors.
A video on the team’s Facebook page shows them preparing for their much anticipated match.
The team, from the small city of Chapeco, was in the middle of what had been called a “fairy tale season.”
For the first time since the 1970s it had made it last week to the Copa Sudamericana finals – the equivalent of the UEFA Europa League tournament – after defeating Argentina’s San Lorenzo.
Plinio David de Nes Filho, a club director, told Globo TV the whole town was devastated.
“This wasn’t just a group where everyone respected each other, it was a family. Before they got on the plane they said they were going to make this dream come true. And this morning the dream ended.”