AT first, Tuesday, November 29 was just like any other day for Middlesbrough full-back Fabio da Silva. He woke, dressed, and started to get himself ready for training at Rockliffe Park. An item on the news – a potential problem with a Brazilian aircraft in Colombia – caught his attention, but at that stage, it did not seem like anything too out of the ordinary.

Five hours later or so, and with training over, he headed back to the changing room at Middlesbrough’s training ground. As usual, he plucked his phone out of his bag and turned it on to check for any messages. A beep. Then another. Then a flurry of signals that immediately suggested something was badly wrong. Whatever had happened in homeland, it wasn’t just a routine scare.

“I discovered the news that terrible day when I woke up,” said Fabio, who was born in Petropolis, part of the sprawling suburbs of Rio de Janeiro, and who began his career with Fluminese before joining Manchester United at the age of 18. “At first, I just heard there were problems with the Chapecoense flight.

“At first, you did not think it was that big a deal because there was no mention of anything. But then later, I picked up my phone and there were so many messages. That is when I realised the terrible news. I just started crying.”

As the scale of the unfolding tragedy became clear – 71 people lost their lives as a Bolivian Airlines flight ran out of fuel over the Colombian city of Medellin – so Fabio quickly began to appreciate there would be a personal angle to the mourning.

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The 26-year-old was a contemporary of a number of the Chapecoense players who died as their aircraft plunged from the sky, and knew two members of the squad intimately, having played with them in the past.

One, Marcelo, a talented centre-half, was one of 19 players who lost their lives. Another, full-back Alan Ruschel, was one of six passengers who remarkably survived the accident.

Understandably, Fabio finds it difficult to talk about his feelings in the wake of such a shocking event, but he takes solace from the bravery of the survivors. As he knows only too well, having criss-crossed the globe repeatedly during his footballing career, he could easily have been sitting in one of the seats on that plane, and his emotional reaction to the minute’s silence that preceded Middlesbrough’s home game with Hull in the week after the crash underlined just how deeply he had been affected.

“I had two friends on that flight,” he said. “I played with them both when we were young. Alan Ruschel, who was one of those who survived, was on TV this week talking about it. To see him talking about it was so emotional for me. It is very hard for me to talk about it as you can appreciate.

“A lot of those guys who died were just like me. Travelling around by plane, starting to play football at a very young age.  You see yourself in them. It could happen to any one of us really, Brazil is such a big country, you have to fly everywhere. I played with those two guys when we were 13 or 14. We were all young players together at Fluminese.

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“Chapecoense was not a big club but an emerging club, a growing club. All the boys there, they have never really had a big contract before. But because of their recent success, they were starting to be rewarded with big contracts.

“It was life changing for them getting those contracts. Not just them but for their families too. That almost makes it even worse. You could imagine yourself in that position. That minute silence before the Hull game was very hard for me - it brought it all home.”

While Fabio has not played club football in Brazil since 2008, he makes regular trips back to his homeland to meet up with the family he left behind when he moved to England as a teenager.

Lyon is his other regular port of call, to visit his twin brother, Rafael, who accompanied him to Old Trafford, but who has spent the last two seasons playing in Ligue 1.

The twins were regarded as a joint package when they joined Manchester United together, often lining up as part of the same back four, and Fabio admits he has missed Rafael since the pair went their opposite ways.

“I left home at 11 to follow my football career, and played with Rafael all the way through,” he said. “For all my life, we shared a home, living together wherever we were until the time we left Manchester United.

“That was the first time we had never been together. It was quite hard for us because we are so close.

“We were both scouted by United at the same time when we were at Fluminese. He played on the right and I was left-back. But the scout liked both of us so we both went to United.

“It was a big step going there for the trial. We were 16 and training with the first team. Sir Alex (Ferguson) wanted us to train with the senior squad, and luckily he liked both of us.”

Rafael is about to begin a winter break as the French league shuts down, and will be travelling to Teesside for a family Christmas that could yet involve an impromptu training session at Rockliffe.

“We are having a big family do over here,” said Fabio. “There will be about 15 of us on Christmas Day with my parents flying over from Brazil.

“I will try to have some fun with my team-mates. At Manchester United, the only way Sir Alex could tell us apart was because I wore a wedding ring. But he (Rafael) is married now and we both wear them.

“People probably do not notice but I think we look a bit different now. My brother has a couple of marks on his face which I don’t. Although some of our scars are in the same place.

“Maybe I’ll bring along Rafael to training - he can train instead of me. Maybe if I fancy a rest on Boxing Day, I will get him to fill in!”