The footballing past of Numa Turcatti, one of the heroes of “The Snow Society”, which became a club

Of the tragedy, miracle or resilience of the Andes -depending on your perspective- there are an infinite number of possible approaches. Everyone knows the story of the plane that crashed in 1972 on the snow-capped mountain range, whose survivors returned from a freezing hell two months later and by their own means.

In the latest fiction about the experience in the mountain range, the Snow Society, the character he embodies Numa Turcatti He is the narrator of a story that continues to fascinate even though the outcome has been known for more than 50 years. What the Netflix film doesn’t tell you is the impact he had on Loyola FC, the soccer team that was about to be promoted to the First Division of the Uruguayan University League.

Turcatti was one of those who boarded Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 which never landed in Chile. He was not part of the rugby team Old Christian Club, but of companions. He played football and traveled with four other teammates, nothing to do with the oval.

Right-handed, fast pointer, captain and delegate of the team of friends founded six years earlier and who participated in the University League tournament. An exclusively amateur championship, in which university teams or clubs competed outside the professional structure of the Uruguayan Football Federation.

“Plane with 45 YOUNG URUGUAYANS MISSING”So, like a catastrophe, Turcatti’s football friends read the news and although the information said that “a rugby team was traveling”, they knew that it was the plane that Numa had taken the day before. Amid the uncertainty, the soccer team wondered whether they should continue playing the tournament until Numa and the rest of the survivors were rescued.

Those at Loyola were sure that Turcatti was fine, given his physical condition. “He was very fast, very fast, with his head down, he ran and no one stopped him. “He always played as a seven, he was a natural right forward”, he describes him as a player Raúl Zorrilla de San Martíncompanion since childhood at the Colegio Seminario, in an interview recently published in the La Liga Universitaria de futbol newsletter.

While Turcatti and the other four Loyola players found themselves in an uncertain part of the mountain range and the rescue teams of three countries searched for them from above, in Montevideo their football companions wondered if they should continue the competition with their captain and some of the team’s equipment missing. The consensus was to move forward.

“When the plane crashed, we had a pretty uniform, nice picture, and the captain was Numa. We arrived in “B” second, with a good chance of moving up to “A”, but when the plane crashes with five players from the team, The disappointment was so great that from October until the end of the year, when the championship ended, we lost all the matches, except one which we drew.. Instead of going up to A, we went down to C,” he recalled with Zorrilla de San Martín in the aforementioned interview.

The history of the massif – told by Turcatti’s character – is well known: The search has been suspended and all passengers are presumed dead. and the crew of the flight that took off from Uruguay bound for Chile and never landed at its destination.

“He was the one who organized the whole team, he called you, he was very good. He had unique moral and intellectual attributes. His kindness, intelligence and friendliness were a wonderful example for us. He was a flower of a boy on the pitch. He would never complain about football, he would never stop supporting those who played. He was totally conciliatory as a person. That’s why they appreciated it so much in the mountain range,” says Zorrilla San Martín.

Judging by the reports, Loyola FC had not lost five players, but they were also left without a leader. The team had lost its identity. After just four years of travel, that seemed like the end of the group made up of friends and friends of friends.

Hand. 58 years after the first match that confirmed the dream of their former schoolmates – a 3-1 victory against Loquibambia – the team is still standing. It continues in the University League in tournaments of various categories Under 16, Under 20, Seniores and Pre-senior. Obviously none of these founders play anymore. Neither those who were on the mountain range, nor the others.

What ended was Loyola, but not the team. Because after the covers of newspapers around the world were shocked by the news that there were survivors of the plane crash that occurred two months ago, the team decided to change its name. Numa Turcatti has been playing every weekend for 43 yearsas the team is called today in which the memory of the captain and the most inspiring player it has had in its history survives.