From Triumph to Tragedy is the glorious, uplifting but ultimately tragic story of Chapecoense, the small-town Brazilian football club that made worldwide news following their meteoric rise from non-league to continental sensation.
Yet the headlines that will be remembered centre on the air disaster en route to what should have been their greatest ever match. Less than ten years after the local mayor had intervened to save the club from liquidation, Associacao Chapecoense de Futebol had become champions of the Santa Catarina State Championship.
At the summit of the Brazilian national league structure, they also qualified sensationally for the final of the Copa Sul Americana. The team of rejects and journeymen became heroes not just in their own city, but also to the whole nation.
But the final was never to take place, as tragedy struck to render all those triumphant nights insignificant. Could the club now stage one more incredible recovery to allow Era Chape to continue, rather than to accept their fate as the tragic team beloved in fans’ memories?
Here though, he presents his Top Ten Football Books, with a noticeable Manchester United flavour, a nod to the club team that influenced his love of the game.
I was surprised by how much I thoroughly enjoyed this after being bought it as a Christmas present shortly after he retired from playing. Interesting, deep and articulate, the book is more reminiscent of Neville the pundit and TV personality than it is of the dour and often scowling right-back.
Another present – this time from my Irish sister-in-law. This is an underdog story for the ages, told by the former coach of Donegal (Gaelic Football), written grippingly alongside his own personal, and often heart-breaking, story.
One of my favourite players, I looked forward to reading his story and, in particular, his own thoughts on his perennial misuse by England. Penned by him personally, it turns out to be a surprising rollercoaster of sporting highs and terrible woes as Carrick discusses his spells suffering with mental illness. As a fellow overthinker, he only went up in my estimations – something I didn’t think possible before opening the book.
Sir Alex was manager of Manchester United when I was in nappies, and his team of Schmeichel, Giggs, Cantona et al are one of the main reasons I fell in love with the game. Reading his story from a toolmakers apprentice in Glasgow to winning The Treble to discovering and nurturing Cristiano Ronaldo was a joy, and a perfect way to reminisce on the 20-years of joy his team had given me.
The harrowing but wonderfully uplifting story of the Makana FA – set up by the political prisoners of Robben Island at the very summit apartheid in South Africa. The ability to organize and run a football association for two decades helped give the men the confidence and the tools to eventually overthrow their captors. Inspiring stuff, to say the very least.
A true rags to riches story. The pages seem to turn with the Zlatan swagger, as his personality and confidence ooze from the telling of his life story. Great anecdotes that let the reader know, Zlatan is not just a character he plays to the camera, it is a way of life.
The rollercoaster ride that is part of pop culture but told from George’s heavy heart. What makes this more tragic, is that it ends at such a happy period of his life – and we all know that there was another heart-breaking chapter or two to follow.
‘Footballer, Philosopher, Legend’ is the sub-title of this extraordinary biography, and I really cannot add to that. A unique and amazing life told brilliantly and researched diligently. Inspired me to do further research into Sócrates bizarre appearance for Garforth Town in my very own West Yorkshire and subsequently write an article for These Football Times.
When I think of this book, I feel my heart get heavy. I couldn’t stop thinking about it for days during and after reading. To this day, when I see a positive social media message from Paul I feel instantly glad that he is in a good place. A harrowing read with spikes of unbridled joy and triumph from a gentle giant and a footballer ahead of his time.
In this era of over-hyped, sensationalist media coverage, the
words, ‘disaster’ or ‘tragedy’ are banded about in football like confetti, usually
following a defeat for any Premier League club you’d care to mention. The
reality is that down the years in the game there have been events that are genuine
tragedies. These have included the loss of Italian side Torino’s squad in 1949,
the deaths of many of Manchester United’s ‘Busby Babes’ in 1958, that of Peruvian
club Alianza Lima in 1987 and the Zambia national team in 1993. The common
factor linking all four, being that these disasters were as a result of plane
crashes.
This sad list was added to on 26 November 2016, when Brazilian
side Chapecoense who were travelling to the first-leg of the 2016 Copa Sudamericana Finals in Columbia,
saw their playing and management staff decimated in a crash that saw their
plane plough into the forest mountain of Cerro Gordo.
Whilst Triumph to
Tragedy – The Chapecoense Story details the awful events of that catastrophic
event, the book expresses so much more about the Brazilian game and its
footballing culture, quite an achievement for a book of only 223 pages. It manages
this due to the fact that author Steven Bell has such a passion for the Brazil
national team, nicknamed the Canarinhos
(Little Canaries), his fascination with the World Cup and his love of the game
at club level in the country.
The book follows Bell’s experiences beginning with him
watching Brazil win the 1994 World Cup which took place in the USA and which
led to him travelling to South America to see them host the 2014 tournament. That
six week visit was the catalyst for his deeper interest in the game in Brazil and
his discovery of a side based in the south of the country, Chapecoense. The
author is cleverly able to combine the story of the Brazilian national side, who
have one of the biggest kit deals in history with Nike, with a team that in
2006 was basically a non-league outfit on the verge of going out of business. This
linking of paths is achieved because Bell highlights the 1994 World Cup winning
Brazil squad under coach Carlos Alberto Gomes Parreira, who weren’t in the
tradition of the free-flowing sides of the past playing, O Jogo Bonito (the beautiful game), but instead adopted a pragmatic
European style to lift the trophy. This change in approach was an influence as Chapecoense, nicknamed the Verdao (the Big Green) took on the mantel of underdog, a side willing
to scrap and fight to survive and overcome more illustrious opposition.
The clubs incredible rise and promotions are well documented
in the book and the author’s knowledge of the working of the Brazilian football
organisation is very useful in understanding the State Championship system,
promotion through the Serie divisions
and the wider structure relationship within the game in South America as a
whole, something very unfamiliar to those used to the rudiments of the pyramid
system in England.
As a reader, you are introduced to some of the players,
officials and management that came through the Big Green’s rise, and their individual
stories are told in such a way that you connect with them. They are real people.
Some who had harsh backgrounds, others whose careers were considered over, but
all human, with wives, girlfriends, families and a love of the club. So, despite
the fact that you know there is tragedy waiting in the story, it is still shocking
and sad to read of the deaths of characters that Bell has warmly introduced.
The book doesn’t end with the crash and instead the final
chapter details how the club, country and the footballing community dealt with
the disaster, which lead the author to an interesting concluding observation.
Bell was in Brazil when the Canarinhos hosted the 2014 World Cup and the nation and its
national side hoped to exorcise the demons of the 1950 World Cup loss to
Uruguay, instead they were humiliated by Germany in the Semi-Finals 7-1. It was
a night of tears and tantrums and of perceived national tragedy – Bell describes
the aftermath in which, “Brazilian football was broken: Brazil as a nation was
broken too.” Fast forward to 2018 in Russia and the book reflects a change in
reaction following defeat to Belgium in the Quarter-Finals, with Bell’s opinion
that the Chapecoense disaster had left the nation with the realisation that
there is more to life than football.
Football Book Reviews caught up with Steven Bell the author of From Triumph to Tragedy: The Chapecoense Story (Pitch Publishing) to talk about his recently published book.
Football Book Reviews (FBR):Your day job is as an engineer, but what is your football background and how did that lead to you writing ‘From Triumph to Tragedy’?
Steven Bell (SB): My background – well firstly as a poor amateur player! But a huge football fan who grew up in the 90s and became besotted with Sir Alex Ferguson’s Class of 92. It was then Euro ’96 which swung me towards supporting England really rather than a club side at that stage if I’m honest. That subsequently led me to becoming obsessed with the World Cup in particular and the whole colour, fans, passion and spectacle of the tournament.
My first real World Cup experience was watching Brazil win it in 1994, and when they were hosts in 2014, I knew I just had to go. Going there I made a lot of contacts and started following Brazilian football. The group I was with stayed in Rio for six weeks, next to the old training ground of Flamengo and I sort of adopted them as my Brazilian team and began following their results. When I was back in the UK the first result I looked at was one that was a huge upset, when Flamengo, the biggest team in Brazil, were beaten by a team I’d never heard of called Chapecoense. That was at the back end of 2014, and after doing a bit of digging discovered that they were a team that over the last few years had come from nothing – non league, on the verge of going out of business – to the top division in Brazil. It connected with me as a fantastic sporting story, with a couple of individuals, like the goalkeeper Danilo and star striker Bruno Rangel, with incredible individual journeys, overcoming poverty and making it to the top at the back end of their careers.
Fast forward two years to November 2016, and I woke up to an alert on my phone from all the news outlets that the team had been involved in a tragic plane crash on their way to what would have been their biggest match in the club’s history. I got hooked on the story from there and decided to research it for the book.
FBR: So, does the book trace that story from 2014?
SB: It actually goes back to my love and passion for both Brazilian football and the World Cup with Brazil winning it in 1994 and how that team inspired change in tactics and culture towards football in the country. It was an influence on Chapecoense and their style of play, they didn’t mind being the underdog, they didn’t mind that other clubs had better individual players – Chape could defend and dig in, scrapping and battling to get results.
So, in terms of this book, the story of Chapecoense starts in earnest in 2006, when they were a non league team, pretty much part-time, basically a team and a club falling to pieces. However, the local businessmen didn’t want to be part of a city without a football team, so they got together and put in place a financial package which rescued the club from oblivion. In addition, they brought in a decent manager and created a sound infrastructure, and gradually the team went from strength to strength, which saw them eight years later make it to Brazil’s top division, Serie A, before tragedy struck when travelling to play the First-leg of the 2016 Copa Sudamericana Final against Atletico Nacional.
FBR:The book obviously takes the reader through to the tragic events of the 26 November 2016, but presume the story doesn’t stop there?
SB: In the timeline of the book, the crash is probably about three quarters of the way through and then there is a section on the how, why, and aftermath for the club, players, families, community and indeed Brazilian football as a whole. The book actually concludes with a reflection on the 2018 World Cup, which finished around the same time as I was completing the manuscript for From Triumph to Tragedy. As someone who has followed Brazilian football it was interesting to note the reaction to the teams defeat to Belgium in the Quarter-Finals, it was more reflective and a realisation that there is more to life than football, which I believe is a result of the Chapecoense disaster.
FBR: This seems then to be a significant change to the reaction in the wake of the 2014 World Cup Semi-Final mauling 7-1 by Germany.
SB: It’s funny you should mention that game, as I was watching it in Rio and it was a day I remember, with torrential rain all day. At the whistle, there were tears and tantrums, it felt like a national tragedy and was a surreal place to be on that day. For many Brazilians it felt like the world had come to an end. Compare that to four years later, when they valiantly lost to Belgium, when Brazil were the better team in the match, the reaction was completely different, and I genuinely believe that was influenced by the Chapecoense tragedy.
FBR: It is interesting that you talk about a change in fan perception and culture of football in Brazil arising from the crash. Does this book also show a different side and a change to Brazilian football in other ways, as many older football fans and perhaps historically, Brazil have been considered to have essentially one style of football?
SB: It is very much why I started the book at the point of the 1994 World Cup in the USA. Carlos Alberto Gomes Parreira was the Brazilian manager at the time and the style of play he brought in was very unpopular with the media and fans in Brazil who were used to free-flowing football. However, he didn’t have the players to continue that tradition, and he recognised that, so his squad were taught a more pragmatic style that was being used and working for European teams. Italy had been particularly successful with that approach over the previous decade or so, with the irony that Brazil beat the Italians at their own game in the ’94 Final on penalties. It did teach the Brazilian country nationwide that there was another way to play, what Pele had described as, the beautiful game.
FBR: With the recent events at Bury and Bolton Wanderers, does this book have a story to tell for those clubs and their fans at all?
SB: I think it does. Chapecoense were one meeting away from going out of business. Other clubs down the years have proved that there is life after the most trying circumstances. It’s funny what difference a decade can make. Chape in 2006 were on their knees and yet ten years later were taking part in the finals of an international tournament they could only have dreamed of previously. Who knows what lies ahead for Bury and Bolton ten years from now.
FBR:Finally, do you still follow the game closely in Brazil?
SB: Writing this book has been a big part of my life and I’ll always have that interest in the game in Brazil. As I said earlier I was caught up in the furore of the Class of ’92, so I will always say Manchester United were my first team, but having moved to Huddersfield, the Terriers are a passionate club – I live within walking distance of the ground – I can’t help but be caught up in the club. They aren’t doing very well at the minute, and the title of my book, From Triumph to Tragedy, could equally apply to Huddersfield Town at the minute! However, I’m sure they will soon be on the up.
FBR: Steven, many thanks for your time and good luck with what sounds like a fascinating story.
EVENTS:
Saturday 28 September 2019 – Steven will be talking about From Triumph to Tragedy prior to the Huddersfield Town v Millwall fixture in the White Rose Club Lounge in the main stand at the John Smith’s Stadium.
From Triumph to Tragedy is the glorious, uplifting but ultimately tragic story of Chapecoense, the small-town Brazilian football club that made worldwide news following their meteoric rise from non-league to continental sensation.
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