Barcelona to play Chapecoense in August

Rio de Janeiro June 8 (IANS) Barcelona will play tragedy-stricken Brazilian football club Chapecoense in a friendly in early August according to media reports.

The teams will play for the Joan Gamper Trophy on August 7 or 8 at the Camp Nou Brazilian newspaper O Globo said on Wednesday reported Xinhua news agency.

Barcelona invited Chapecoense to take part in the annual match after the small club from Chapeco in southern Brazil was decimated by a plane crash in Colombia last November.

Seventy-one people died including 19 Chapecoense players and all of the team s coaching staff when the LaMia chartered plane in which they were travelling ran out of fuel and plunged into a hillside near Medellin.

Nearly all of the club s directors and 20 journalists were also killed.

There were just six survivors: three Chapecoense players two flight staff and a journalist.

--IANS
tri/vt