When Marília de Barros Silva heard reports that the popular Brazilian soccer club Flamengo was signing a player for almost $18.6 million, she felt sadness – but also resentment.
For a year, she has been trying in vain to reach a settlement with the Rio de Janeiro club after her teenage son Arthur Vinicius died in a fire that engulfed his dormitory at the team’s academy for young players.
De Barros Silva says she was incredulous over the amount being paid for the team’s new star. She says it dwarfs the amount that she and the public defender’s office had been trying to get Flamengo to pay in compensation for the loss of her son, a promising defender who had played for Brazil’s under-17 team.
Saturday marked one year since the fire killed 10 of Flamengo’s academy players, all between 14 and 16 years old. It was “the worst tragedy” in the team’s 124-year history, club president Rodolfo Landim has repeatedly said since.
Against that grim backdrop, Flamengo turned in one of its best seasons in decades. The team won the Rio state championship, its first Brazilian national league championship since 2009 and the prestigious Copa Libertadores in a nail-biting final against Argentina’s River Plate. Flamengo hadn’t won the South American crown for 38 years.
But while its 2019 success helped the club sign several million-dollar deals for players, it has reached compensation agreements with just four of the 10 victims’ families. Negotiations with the others seemed stalled as the police investigation into possible homicide charges concluded Friday.
In a country where one of every five Brazilians is a Flamengo fan, de Barros Silva and other parents wonder when justice, and peace, will come.
“It’s Flamengo’s insensitivity, of turning that page,” she said at her humble home in Rio de Janeiro state.
She and other parents were emotionally damaged by the club’s lack of empathy, she said. Some didn’t even receive a phone call from top executives.
Relatives of the victims gathered outside Flamengo’s training center Saturday to light candles in memory of their lost sons, but most were forbidden to enter the facility.
Wedson Cândido de Matos, father of 14-year-old defender Pablo Henrique, had traveled 280 miles to join the commemoration and was the only one to be let in, his lawyer said. At the public hearing Friday, de Matos said: “Do you know what I have from my son? Only pain. Only a hole. Flamengo won titles, I got pain. I got a coffin full of ashes.”
Documents that emerged shortly after the fire showed that for years the club had flouted city regulations at the training facility, accumulated fines and was targeted by state prosecutors who questioned the treatment given to academy players and the container-like structure in which they were housed. Lawyers for the academy players’ families and fire experts have said that the polyurethane used in the construction of the temporary dorms could have fueled the fast-moving blaze.
Flamengo executives say the conditions at the academy have been improved since the tragedy. The club also stresses that it has been making a court-ordered monthly payment of $2,300 to families.
“Flamengo is an immeasurable force. We feel like ants fighting giants,” Mariju Maciel, a lawyer representing the family of one of the victims, said during Friday’s hearing at Rio’s state legislature.
In 2019, Flamengo saw gross revenues soar to $200 million – the most a Brazilian club has earned in a single year – thanks to sponsors and TV rights. It is also making big money with its players. Recent transfers of strikers Vinicius Júnior and Reinier to Spain’s Real Madrid reportedly brought the club some $82 million.
Such sums allowed the most popular club in Brazil to spend big on new players.
Just days ago, the club reportedly agreed to pay Inter Milan nearly 17 million euros to sign top scorer Gabriel Barbosa, who came last year on a loan. Flamengo’s most expensive signing in 2019 was Uruguayan midfielder Giorgian de Arrascaeta, who cost nearly $22 million.
The team’s windfall has, paradoxically, subjected victims’ families to accusations of opportunism. Some Flamengo fans have claimed the families are using the tragedy to try to cash in, staining the image of their beloved team.