Flamengo prefers to erase and forget the tragedy, says series director about fire at the club – 03/14/2024 – Sports

Five years after the fire that killed ten young players at Ninho do Urubu, Flamengo’s training center, no person has been criminally punished, one of the families has not yet reached a reparation agreement directly with the club and the survivors live with trauma caused by the tragedy.

With the aim of encouraging debate about how the directors of the Rio team should have acted, the series “O Ninho: Futebol & Tragédia”, released this Wednesday (13) by Netflix, contextualizes the drama of the boys from the red-black base while also indicating how the events that occurred in February 2019 could have been avoided and, subsequently, repaired.

“This tragedy is part of the club’s history in the same way as Flamengo’s achievements”, he tells Sheet Pedro Asberg, the director of documentary production. “Flamengo institutionally, the people who run the club, prefer to take a path that, unfortunately, is one of erasure, of oblivion. That’s why it’s important that this series exists, to give visibility and prevent this tragedy from being forgotten.”

The work, created by A Fábrica with an original idea from UOL, is divided into three episodes, with testimony from survivors, victims’ families and journalists from the portal involved in the investigation. In the reports, the boys’ relatives claim that they had no knowledge of the precarious conditions of the accommodation that ended up catching fire.

On the other hand, reports produced by the portal since the fire indicate that Flamengo was aware of the risks to which the boys were subject, such as problems with the electrical installations, which were the main cause cited for what happened.

Eight people respond to a criminal action proposed by the MP-RJ (Public Ministry of Rio de Janeiro) for ten culpable homicides and three crimes of bodily harm.

According to Pedro, the series’ production made efforts to listen to those involved or their legal representatives, but some did not respond to requests for interviews, while others ignored the contacts.

“From the moment you are, in some way, connected to that [tragédia] and you prefer not to speak, you prefer not to position yourself on camera, you prefer not to give your version, you are taking a position”, says the director.

On February 7th of this year, five years after the fire, Flamengo released a statement regretting what had happened, in addition to highlighting that the club has no intention of erasing the tragedy from the club’s memory.

“We lost ten young athletes and we cannot, nor do we want, forget that. We have to remember our young people forever, every ten minutes of every game and always”, wrote the club.

The production also sought never-before-seen images of the fire, in addition to recreating some moments in the form of a simulation, with the aim of shedding light on the causes of what happened.

“Our vision, our search, has always been for humanization, to give a voice, face and name to these people. Both to the fathers and mothers who lost their children, to the 16 young people who survived, and to Benedito Ferreira, the security guard at the Flamengo, who saved three young people”, says Pedro.

Benedito ended up being fired from the club and is currently having difficulty making ends meet, as medical reports indicate that he is not psychologically fit to work due to the trauma he suffered on the night of the fire.

“To this day I remember when they asked me if the boys were sleeping when it caught fire”, he recalls during an excerpt from the interview he gave for the series.

The work also states that nine of the ten families of the fatal victims reached an agreement with the Rio team. Goalkeeper Christian Esmério’s family members won a compensation claim in court in February this year, in a decision that can still be appealed.

According to Pedro Asberg, Christian’s father should receive compensation of around R$1.4 million, an amount identical to what should also be paid to the goalkeeper’s mother.

In the same note released in February, Flamengo confirmed that it reached an agreement with nine families and that one of them receives a pension every month regardless of the legal process and that the club is open to reaching an agreement.

“Flamengo can and should give more visibility to this tragedy as a way of preserving the memory of these young people. Flamengo built a chapel inside Ninho do Urubu and there is no mention of these boys. Supposedly it was inaugurated on one of the anniversaries of the tragedy, there are ten squares there, but nothing more. Flamengo opened a museum and there is no mention of this tragedy”, criticizes the director of the series.

He also says he hopes that his work encourages the red and black fans to “demand from the board [do clube] a more human look and attitude towards these families who lost their children”.