A plane carrying an entire Brazilian football team has crashed on approach to the Colombian city of Medellin, killing 75 people.

Colombian officials on Tuesday night said the chartered plane was carrying 81 passengers and crew, including the 22 members of the Chapecoense team, when it went down over mountainous territory due to an electrical failure.

“It’s a tragedy of huge proportions,” Medellin’s Mayor Federico Gutierrez told Blu Radio on his way to the crash site.

The plane was also reported to be carrying 22 football journalists and nine crew members.

Players Ruschel and Danilo, who were pulled from the wreckage, before the plane took off. Photo: Snapchat

The Jose Maria Cordova de Rionegro airport, which serves Medellin, posted on its Twitter account: “Confirmed, the aircraft licence number CP2933 was carrying the team @ChapecoenseReal. Apparently there are survivors.”

Spanish language news source Noticias Caracol reported the first Chapecoense survivor to arrive at a nearby hospital was 27-year-old fullback Alan Ruschel, who apparently asked staff to take care of his wedding ring.

Goalkeeper Danilo and reserve keeper Jakson Follmann were also reportedly pulled alive from the wreckage.

However, Danilo, 31, later died from his injuries in hospital, leaving players Alan Luciano Ruschel and Follmann as the only survivors among the players, according to a statement from Colombia’s disaster management agency.

One media outlet has reported that Follmann, 24, has since had his leg amputated in hospital.

Filipe Machado shortly before the flight

https://twitter.com/BlueCitizen007/status/803650040724013056

The team was on its way to play in the finals of South American club competition the Copa Sudamericana – the equivalent of the Europa League – against Medellin team Atletico Nacional.

#Chapacoense players who didn't travel with the squad in the team dressing room after being told the news. pic.twitter.com/JAxfMvxWjZ

— Lance Santos (@santos__sport) November 29, 2016

The South American Football Confederation has since announced it has suspended “all activities” relating to the tournament following the crash.

Caracol news posted this image of the wreckage on Twitter. Photo: Twitter

Nightmare end to a fairytale season

In a tragic twist, the incident comes as Chapecoense were preparing to cap a dream two seasons and contest the finals of their first major tournament.

The club was promoted to Brazil’s first division last season for the first time in their 40-year history.

To make the finals of the Copa Sudamericana, the team took down Argentine favourites San Lorenzo de Almagro in the Copa semi-finals.

A history of sports aviation disasters

Eerily, the Colombian disaster is not the first, or even second time, a sports team has been almost or completely wiped out in a plane crash.

In 2011, Russia’s Lokomotiv ice hockey team lost all 27 players, two coaches and seven club officials when their flight ran off the runway before catching fire near the city of Yaroslavl on their way to Minsk.

Only one passenger – a flight engineer – survived the crash.

The last-known image of Chapecoense, taken before takeoff. Photo: Twitter

Soccer teams have fared especially badly: in 1993, Zambia’s national soccer team lost all 22 players and five team officials when a flight went down in Libreville, Gabon,

England still mourns the deaths of 11 Manchester United players and staff in the so-called ‘Munich Air Disaster’ of 1958, while Peruvian first-division soccer team Alianza Lima lost 16 players and its coach in 1987 after a crash in Lima.

The year 1970 will be remembered as a tragic one for American Football, when 37 members of Marshall University’s Thundering Herd football team were killed.

The disaster was memorialised in the Hollywood film We Are Marshall, starring Matthew McConaughey and Michael J Fox.

That same year, 14 players from the Wichita State University football team were killed, along with their coach, when their flight crashed into a mountain over Colorado.