Earlier today, February 6, Emiliano Sala’s former club Nantes demanded that Cardiff City pay the first instalment of a £15 million transfer fee.
Sala disappeared on January 21 when the plane he was in, along with pilot David Ibbotson, vanished near the channel island of Guernsey.
Rescue operation teams examining the wreckage of the plane have confirmed that one body is visible, though it has not yet been confirmed who that may be.
Sala signed to Cardiff City in January and said goodbye to his former teammates in Nantes, western France, before boarding the Piper Malibu N264DB plane which was heading to Cardiff.
Although circumstances surrounding the plane’s crash are still being investigated, Nantes has demanded the Welsh team pay the agreed £15 million for the signing.
The BBC reports the transfer fee is due to be paid in instalments over three years, but the Premier League team are withholding payments until they are satisfied with the documentation regarding Sala’s disappearance.
Now, Cardiff City chairman Mehmet Dalman has responded about the club’s payment to Nantes, saying they are intending to pay, but want to wait until the investigation is over out of ‘respect to the family’ of Sala.
Speaking to French newspaper L’Equipe, Dalman said:
The only thing I can say, because it is a sensitive subject, is that I confirm that what you are saying is true. And to be honest, I do not want to say anything more in the state.
The first thing is that the body has not been recovered yet. We must show respect to the family.
There is the process of recovering the plane. It’s too early for us to comment. When we think it’s the right time to do it [we will comment].
If the recovery of the wreckage is successful, it will be moved to the AAIB’s base at Farnborough in Hampshire, where investigators would study the remains of the plane in an attempt to figure out what caused it to crash.
An interim report on the incident is due to be published in just over two weeks, according to the BBC
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Charlie Cocksedge is a journalist and sub-editor at UNILAD. He graduated from the University of Manchester with an MA in Creative Writing, where he learnt how to write in the third person, before getting his NCTJ. His work has also appeared in such places as The Guardian, PN Review and the bin.