A year after 10 Flamengo players died in a fire, their families still seek justice | Football

Simone Souza stood outside Flamengo’s training ground, hoping to be let in. She just wanted to go into the car park, light a candle and say a prayer. A year before, on the night of 8 February 2019, her 15-year-old nephew Jorge Eduardo and nine of his friends were burned to death in that very spot when a fire engulfed the makeshift dormitories the club had used to house their youth team.

On the day of the anniversary, the Flamengo players and coaching staff paid their own tribute to the boys at the training ground. Simone merely wished to do the same. But her request was denied. Security barred her and the relatives of another victim, forcing them to kneel in prayer at the side of the road. This stunningly insensitive decision – “humiliating” was the word Souza used – has been met with widespread criticism in Brazil. It has also provided a crystal-clear summary of how Flamengo has handled the fallout from this most terrible of tragedies.

More than a year has passed since the fire took the lives and dreams of Christian Esmerio, Jorge Eduardo, Athila Paixao, Rykelmo Vianna, Arthur Vinicius de Barros Silva Freitas, Bernardo Pisetta, Samuel Thomas Rosa, Pablo Henrique, Vitor Isaias and Gedson Santos – 10 youth team players all aged between 14 and 16. Only three of their families have reached conclusive compensation agreements with Flamengo and nobody has been held responsible for the blaze in the courts. Meanwhile, the club has experienced unprecedented success: winning the Brazilian title and the Copa Libertadores, playing Liverpool in the Club World Cup final, and posting the best financial results in their history.

The club had been warned about the safety of the dormitories. The boys were sleeping in shipping containers that had been pushed together, with barred windows and just one exit. The site had only been granted planning permission to be used as a car park and the accommodation was the subject of 31 fines from Rio de Janeiro local government owing to the lack of safety certificates. The fire began when an air-conditioning unit short circuited and it spread quickly through the insulating foam used in the construction, killing 10 of the 26 boys inside. “We only found bodies inside,” said one of the firefighters at the scene. “The place was completely overtaken by fire.”

Rio de Janeiro state prosecutors suggested an out-of-court settlement consisting of an immediate payment of 2 million Brazilian reais to each family (around £355,000 each) plus 10,000 reais (£1,750) per month to each family until the day their sons would have turned 45. The payments would not have made a dent in the club’s finances. Flamengo brought in 857 million reais in 2019 (£152m) – the most a Brazilian club has ever earned in a single year. In the last 18 months, they have spent well over 200 million reais (£36m) on player transfers alone.

Yet, instead of paying up, club president Rodolfo Landim and his directors decided that the boys’ lives should be bartered over. They offered families 400,000 reais up front (£71,000) and Brazil’s 998 real-a-month minimum wage to be paid for 10 years, which was rejected immediately.

Three of the families have reached settlements with the club, with a 500,000 real fine reportedly written into the contract if they break the confidentiality agreement, but the other seven are still involved in long and painful legal battles. In December, a court in Rio ordered Flamengo to pay each of the seven families 10,000 reais a month until their cases are resolved. The club is fulfilling that order, but the fact that they immediately appealed the decision shows their reluctance to do so.

In the wake of the fire, Landim said it was “without a doubt the worst tragedy this club has been through” and that “the most important thing now is for us to try to minimise the pain and suffering of these families.” Yet he has done his best to avoid interviews for the last year and did not show up to a parliamentary hearing earlier this month as part of the ongoing investigation into the fire.

He did, however, find time to criticise Simone Souza and the other relatives for going to the training ground on the anniversary of the fire. “Why did they go there without warning [the club]?”, he asked in a denunciatory tone, before accusing the families of “making a damned racket” to draw the attention of the media. While the family members prayed on the side of the road, Landim was at a mass organised by the club. The families were not invited.

The following day Flamengo beat Madureira 2-0 at the Maracanã in a game marked by a mix of tributes to the victims and fan protests over the way Flamengo directors have conducted themselves in the wake of the tragedy. After the game, Landim was interviewed on TV about the wrangling over compensation and said that “Flamengo cannot accept any absurd proposal that is made” by the families.

Flamengo, which markets itself as the club of the people and boasts Brazil’s largest fanbase, has been widely condemned. Writing for UOL Esporte, football journalist Pedro Ivo Almeida accused the club of treating the families “like enemies”. Carlos Eduardo Mansur took a similar tone in the O Globo newspaper, writing: “Flamengo should already have resolved the question of compensation or made a greater effort to do away with the feeling that they are leading a petty dispute. But it is not only about the money. It is to signal – to the millions of people who feed themselves on the dreams that Flamengo sells – that you do not negotiate over a life, that it is possible to offer society empathy and behaviour beyond the ordinary.”

When the club marked the anniversary of the tragedy on Twitter, one fan urged them to “treat the families with more humanity, dignity, care and hospitality.” Another merely wrote: “We want justice.”

Fausto Silva, one of Brazil’s most famous television presenters, denounced the club on his Sunday night TV show, saying: “The behaviour of the Flamengo directors in the case of the fire is inadmissible, indecent. The problem isn’t money. No amount is going to bring the boys back. The problem is character, sensitivity, a little humanity.”

In response to Silva’s criticism, Flamengo published a statement saying the presenter was “demonstrating a total lack of understanding about the case.” Their statement detailed a series of measures the club says it has put in place since the deaths, including the 10,000-real monthly payments to families and their offer of compensation, which they claim is “many times greater that the Brazilian courts usually determine in cases like this.”

The families of three victims – Jorge Eduardo, Christian Esmerio and Pablo Henrique – replied the next day through their lawyers, saying Flamengo were disseminating “erroneous information”. “It is not true that the directorate has offered the families a greater sum than the Brazilian courts usually determine in cases like this,” said the statement. “As widely reported, there is no case in history that exhibits factual similarities to the tragedy.” They also pointed out that the compensation “is not being paid voluntarily by the club, but as a result of a judicial order.”

The families’ fight for justice goes on.

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