Many countries have this one special date in football. A day, an event everyone remembers, even when he was not there. In Germany, this is probably the 4th of July 1954, when Fritz Walter and Helmut Rahn became the heroes of Bern in the World Cup final.
For Peru, opponents of the German national team on Sunday in Sinsheim, it is the 8 December 1987. A fateful day of Peruvian football. It was the day Alianza Lima's entire crew died in a plane crash.
Alianza Lima is a club in Peru that can be compared to Schalke 04 in Germany, Manchester United in England, Inter Milan in Italy. A matter of the heart, a club with a long tradition, founded in the early years of the last century, then series champion in the thirties. Almost all the greats of the country have played there, from the legendary Teófilo Cubillas to Jefferson Farfán, Paolo Guerrero and Claudio Pizarro.
The ponies galloped direction championship
The great era of the club was over in 1987, Cubillas had shot Alianza in the seventies again to master honors, since then, the team had regularly against the arch rivals Sporting Cristal and Universitario had the disadvantage.
But this year in 1987, everything should be different. The club had hired coach Marcos Calderón, a successful coach who had won the Copa América with the national team in 1975 and had already collected ten league titles in the league. Calderón had set up a young team around the 18-year-old highly talented Luis Escobar, the fans and the public had already chosen as the successor to the unique Cubilla.
imago / ZUMA Press
Alfredo Tomassini
The crew was called Los Portillos, the ponies. And under Calderón they had stormed at full gallop to the top of the table, the championship title seemed within reach. The away-side hurdle at Deportivo Pucallpa were also taken 1-0. That was on December 7, 1987. The next day, the team of the best mood came on the return flight. Nobody survived.
With a decrepit Fokker loaned by the Peruvian military, the team and supervisors had departed for Lima. The pilot had initially refused to take the flight because he did not care about the machine. He let himself be persuaded, however. A momentous decision that cost 44 lives. The plane crashed into the ocean as it approached, all players died along with the coach and supervisors.
There have been some terrible plane crashes in football history: Manchester United's "Busby Babes" who crashed in 1958 or Chapecoense's Brazil team in 2016. But the crash of Alianza Lima was probably the worst.
The season somehow ended
After the deep shock, the club somehow tried to finish the season. Ex-professionals were reactivated - headed by the then 39-year-old Cubillas, who had long ended his career. The Chilean team of Colo-Colo lent the club its players, since there is a deep fan friendship between the two clubs - but it was of no use. The lead was lost, the club was completely paralyzed, the title went to Universitario. It took eleven years until Alianza won the championship again.
The exact cause of the crash was never really discovered, the military refused after the accident, any information, an official investigation was prohibited, the country was at the beginning of a decade-long civil war, the "Shining Path" had taken his underground activity, assassinations shook the country , A public debate that basically the Navy was to blame for this tragic accident should be avoided in any case.
Journalists investigating the case were intimidated. Only 19 years after the crash dealt a consuming researched television documentary the case. Peruvian football took many years to recover from this shock. The country's most talented, promising players were among the victims. Qualifying for the FIFA World Cup this summer in Russia was the very first Peru since that event.