Brazil marks one year since Flamengo fire deaths

When Marília de Barros Silva heard reports that the widely popular Brazilian football club Flamengo was signing a player for almost 17 million euros ($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 is 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 seem 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.

She and other parents were emotionally destroyed by the club's lack of empathy, she said.

Some didn't even receive a phone call from top executives.

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 10,000 reais ($2,300) to families.