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Decision due 30/3/26.
Latest from French sports newspaper: https://www.lequipe.fr/Football/Actu...nantes/1615569
Le tribunal de commerce de Nantes rendra sa décision le 30 mars dans le contentieux financier qui oppose Cardiff City et le FC Nantes, près de sept ans après la mort tragique d'Emiliano Sala dans un accident d'avion en 2019.
Près de sept ans après la mort de l'attaquant argentin Emiliano Sala dans un accident d'avion, alors qu'il était en partance pour le pays de Galles, Cardiff City et le FC Nantes se livrent toujours une guerre juridique et financière. Réunis ce lundi devant le tribunal de commerce de Nantes, les deux clubs seront fixés le 30 mars.
Sala, âgé de 28 ans, avait péri dans un accident d'avion au-dessus de la Manche en janvier 2019 alors qu'il rejoignait Cardiff City, où il venait d'être transféré depuis le FCN pour 17 M€. Après avoir été débouté de toutes ses demandes devant la justice sportive, le club gallois avait saisi le tribunal de commerce de Nantes en 2023 pour réclamer réparation au titre des pertes de revenus et autres « préjudices subis » en raison du décès du joueur.
Translation by Google translate:
The Nantes Commercial Court will issue its ruling on March 30 in the financial dispute between Cardiff City and FC Nantes, nearly seven years after the tragic death of Emiliano Sala in a plane crash in 2019.
Nearly seven years after the death of Argentinian striker Emiliano Sala in a plane crash while en route to Wales, Cardiff City and FC Nantes are still locked in a legal and financial battle. Meeting this Monday before the Nantes Commercial Court, the two clubs will learn their fate on March 30.
Sala, 28, died in a plane crash over the English Channel in January 2019 while traveling to Cardiff City, where he had just been transferred from FC Nantes for €17 million. After having all its claims dismissed by the sports court, the Welsh club took its case to the Nantes commercial court in 2023 to claim compensation for lost revenue and other "damages suffered" due to the player's death.
But they were quite happy to until everything went wrong and they needed a reason to distance themselves from the financial hit?
If this is the basis of their claim then it makes it even more bizzare the Cardiff fans all over social media backing the club. I have tried to stay away from this case as much as possible until recent days due to the nature of it but itÂ’s even worse than I imagined.
The courts will decide, not you lot, they have the final word.
Just because the club were willing to proceed with the transfer doesn't mean that they were happy with the state of play with intermediaries (even if Neil Warnock was accepting flights from McKay to go and watch Sala play).
Also, surely the death of two people was not a reasonably foreseeable outcome of the club engaging with an intermediary. That must be enough of a reason for the club to change their position, from "I don't like them, but that's the only way to do business in football" to "the use of shady intermediaries in football is wrong". And that's before you even think about whether the club were aware that the intermediaries were "illegal" (or if it was McKay's son that was legally acting).
It's not unreasonable that when presented with a significant financial outlay, without the club benefitting, that they are motivated to investigate the circumstances under which Sala was unable to play for us. It's also not unreasonable that in doing so, the club want to shine a light on some of the practices of intermediaries - especially if they were acting with a level of criminal negligence that resulted in the death of two people.
I'm not sure I quite see the hypocrisy. Sure, the club engaged with a legal agent whose father was banned, but that doesn't mean they condone the actions of the father (and it seems, another illegal agent) acting on behalf of another club cutting corners to further their own interests does it?
Metaphorically speaking, you don't have to be a fan of capitalism to enjoy a coffee from Starbucks. If that is the only way to get the coffee you want, you aren't a hypocrite for buying one whilst maintaining an anti-capitalist stance. Also, buying a coffee from Starbucks does not mean that you condone the actions of Starbucks or all of the people they employ.
I don't feel the starbucks example is a good one, anyone that against Starbucks should just go to an independent.
This feels more like everyone in the murky underworld knows what's happening and plays their parts, staying in their own lane until they are harmed financially. Then they send around the lads to do something about it. Legally in this case.
At this point I'm all for the club getting something back, I'm just not sure of the likelihood. Just be honest though, we don't need to pretend we are doing it to clean up the game.
As the selling club, FC Nantes (and only FC Nantes) employed banned agents Willie McKay and Bakari Sanogo as their personnel to transfer one of their assets to Cardiff City.
At no point during the transfer was it the responsibility for Cardiff City to complete due diligence on FC Nantes’ third party employees. The same third party employees of FC Nantes that went on to organise an illegal, commercial flight that ultimately killed the most expensive player in Cardiff City’s history.
Personally, I think FC Nantes, the Kita family and their illegally employed agents should face prosecution for their responsibility in this tragedy. In any other industry they’d all be up on gross negligence manslaughter charges. But here we are, almost seven years later and the only people arrested in this awful catastrophe - apart from David Henderson - are two mortuary workers accused of watching CCTV footage of a dead body!!
Say we win the case, where does all the expected(?) millions come from? Say we lose the case, who squares up the legal team representing us? All pie in the sky.
Didn't Cardiff offer transport but it was turned down? They may not have necessarily known the ins and outs of the final flight arrangements
Its all very murky but what seems clear to me is there appear to be a lot of dodgy characters involved on both sides of this. I can understand why Tan feels aggrieved, but I really wish the two clubs could have come to an agreement years ago and avoided all this mess
So it is alleged. But the actual truth of who did what, who knew what and who was happy with what (until things went wrong) will almost certainly never be clearly determined. Some of the claims and excuses are genuinely laughable, though. It's a tragic case that has exposed just how low football clubs and the people who run them will stoop when money is involved.
This article appears very clear in respect of what the football club offered.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/sp...oked-club.html
As does this one
https://www.skysports.com/football/n...-mehmet-dalman
Emiliano Sala 'declined Cardiff City travel offer', says chairman Mehmet Dalman
So it is alleged.
I'm not sure the case hinges on City's alleged offer. Interesting comments from Dalman in the Sky Sports report you linked though:
"We have looked into this quite thoroughly and it is quite evident that Cardiff has the responsibility to offer the player to make arrangements [for travel], which will be commercial flights," Dalman told Sky Sports News.
"That would have meant taking the train from Nantes to Paris, then Paris to Heathrow, then drive down [to Cardiff]. The player's reaction to that was that he wanted to make his own arrangements which would be much quicker."
Matt Lawson The Times.
Mercedes Taffarel, the mother of Emiliano Sala, has issued a statement this evening following yesterday’s hearing in Nantes. For legal reasons I can’t quote it all but she said:
“I was unfortunately not able to join the trial as my flight was cancelled. Hearing about the way FC Nantes pleaded its case is repulsing. All I want is for justice to be done.”
https://x.com/lawton_times/status/19...LTsVTx09ZSEfIA