Me neither but there are ways around it.
There was an incalculable sadness about being there, in a chilly, oak-panelled coroner’s court three years ago, to hear the inquest into
Emiliano Sala’s death.
That was because of the devastating circumstances of his death, and because of the haunting testimony we heard about his mother, Mercedes Taffarel. She had travelled around the Channel Islands after the plane carrying him crashed, wandering up and down beaches, shouting out his name, hoping he might somehow hear her.
But above all, it was because of the haunted look on the face of Sala's brother, Dario, that week as he walked through the corridors of
Bournemouth Town Hall, where the inquest was held - thousands of miles from home and longing for all of this to be over.
It had already been more than three years since they lost their ‘Emi'. ‘Enough, now,' Dario’s eyes seemed to be saying.
It was not to be. The inquest, which recorded a verdict of accidental death, is a distant memory and yet
Cardiff City on Monday mounted the latest stage of their grubby and seemingly endless attempts to secure damages for the loss of Sala, whom they had signed for £15million, two days before his death.
They took their case to the Nantes Commercial Court, claiming more than £100m from FC Nantes, the club who sold them the player.
Cardiff City on Monday mounted the latest stage of their grubby and seemingly endless bid to secure damages for the loss of Emiliano Sala, whom they had just signed before his death
Tributes to Sala laid outside Nantes' Beaujoire Stadium in February 2019
Sala's sister Romina and mother Mercedes in the days after his disappearance - Mercedes later recounted how she had travelled around the Channel Islands, wandering up and down beaches, shouting out his name, hoping he might somehow hear her
This astronomical and utterly delusional sum - ‘fantastic figures’ as Louis-Marie Absil, one of Nantes’s lawyers, described it in court on Monday - is being claimed because of what, the judge repeatedly heard was ‘lost opportunity’. The chance, as Cardiff attempted to parse it, that had their 28-year-old lived, they would not have been relegated from the
Premier League at the end of the 2018-19 season.
Nantes are liable, Cardiff’s lawyers say, because a banned British football agent Willie McKay, was working for the French club to get Sala sold and was involved in setting up the player’s flight to Cardff on a private jet which turned out to be a death trap and was flown by an unqualified pilot.
‘Willie McKay could not have been unaware of the flight's illegality,’ Cardiff's lawyer, Olivier Loizon declared in court yesterday – a quite extraordinary claim, given that McKay did not own the Piper Malibu aircraft, did not have technical oversight of it, and had no involvement in the recruitment of the uncertified pilot, a criminal act of negligence for which someone else received an 18-month jail term.
But Cardiff also seem to have a selective memory when it comes to that agent. Though their lawyers in Nantes seek to demonstrate, through email correspondence, that McKay was involved in the transfer, the club were more than happy to allow him to fly their manager Neil Warnock to Nantes on two occasions to see Sala play.
McKay has also always pointed to how Warnock wanted his help to assist in the signing of midfielder Bouna Sarr and striker Kostas Mitroglou, both at Marseille at the time. Both went elsewhere.
The club were happy to allow McKay to fly Sala and his agent to Cardiff, first to view the club, then to sign. A WhatsApp message from Cardiff’s player liaison officer to McKay’s son Jack – a Cardiff Under 23s player – on the day the plane crashed, stated: ‘Hey bud, just so there’s no confusion, spoke to your dad last night and I’m getting Sala from the airport tonight and will bring him into training tomorrow.’ Only when the plane crashed did McKay’s attachment to Nantes become a factor in their resistance to paying the fee.
Cardiff, who were two points adrift of safety and third bottom when they signed Sala, certainly have their work cut out persuading anyone that he would have saved them.
Sala had scored a goal every three games for Nantes in Ligue 1, and a goal every two matches for Union Sportive Orleans in the French third tier. Even had he been a shining light, there was the question of Cardiff’s dysfunctional defence that season. Warnock’s hapless rearguard shipped nearly 70 goals.
Cardiff seem to have a selective memory when it comes to agent Willie McKay - they were more than happy to allow him to fly their manager Neil Warnock (pictured) to Nantes on two occasions to see Sala play
Pep Guardiola bows his head out of respect during a minute's silence in memory of Sala in January 2019
None of this is the point, of course. What matters is that Sala’s family are being asked to contend with the fact that the footballing merits of the boy they loved and lost is now the focus of intellectual sparring in a French courtroom. Sparring designed to secure Cardiff cash.
A Cardiff City press release about the latest court case, published on Sunday, asked us to accept the notion that there is a worthy motive at play in their latest legal case.
‘Because Emiliano Sala deserved better. Because football deserves better,’ it concludes.
The inference was that this is not about the money. So, if that’s the case, they would surely hand a large chunk of any proceeds to the family? Don’t hold your breath.
