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Sao Paulo - Brazilian football club Chapecoense on Wednesday presented the first three of 20 new players it plans to sign after its squad was wiped out in a deadly plane crash.
The new hires smiled for the cameras wearing the team's green shirt after agreeing to move to the club.
One of them, 27-year-old defender Douglas Grolli, started
out at Chapecoense and is now on loan back to them from his current club
Cruzeiro.
He is hoping to help his former club bounce back after he
joined in mourning its dead members.
The other two new players presented on Wednesday were
midfielder Nadson da Silva, 27, from club Parana and striker Rossi, 23, from
Goias.
"We are working with about 18 to 20 new players"
overall, the club's director, Rui Costa, told a news conference on Tuesday.
"But with so many hirings, which is quite rare in world
football, we have to be very careful because there are lots of contracts and
legal considerations."
Chapecoense rose from obscurity to make it to the final of
the Copa Sudamericana regional tournament.
But the plane disaster on November 28 cut short their dream
as they flew to Colombia to play.
The crash in the Colombian mountains killed 71 people,
including 19 of the team's players and numerous staff.
Three players survived: winger Alan Ruschel, defender Helio
Neto and goalkeeper Jackson Follmann, who had his leg amputated.
Their shirt numbers will be reserved and not allocated to
any of the new players.
Nine of the club's first-team players were not on the
flight.
The club has hired a new manager, Vagner Mancini, to rebuild
the team in its hometown of Chapeco, in Brazil's southern Santa Catarina state.
The side plays at home against Joinville on January 26 in its first match since the disaster.
