The Cardiff City football club estimates its damages at more than 120 million euros in the dispute between it and FC Nantes since the death in a plane crash of Emiliano Sala in 2019, its lawyer said on Monday. After “an in-depth analysis” carried out by a legal expert, “Cardiff’s damage was estimated at 120.2 million euros”, the Cardiff club’s lawyer, Me Céline Jones, told AFP on Monday, confirming information from the newspaper L’Equipe. This analysis was filed Monday afternoon at the Nantes commercial court, which gave FC Nantes until September 23 to respond to Cardiff’s conclusions, said Mr. Jones. “We will take the time to study these new voluminous documents and these figures”, reacted to AFP the lawyers of FC Nantes, Messrs Jérôme Marsaudon and Louis-Marie Absil, evoking “almost phantasmagorical hypotheses” and a reasoning “very far-fetched”.
The Welsh club seized the Nantes commercial court to claim compensation
Argentinian striker Emiliano Sala, aged 28, died in January 2019 in a plane crash over the English Channel as he joined his new club, Cardiff City, to which he had been sold by the FC Nantes. The rising football star had not had time to play with the Welsh club. For FC Nantes’ lawyers, Cardiff’s requests are irrelevant. According to them, the Nantes club cannot be held responsible for any damage because “Fifa, then the Court of Arbitration for Sport (Tas) have already ruled that the transfer had been carried out at the time of the theft and therefore that Emiliano Sala was well a Cardiff player at the time of his death. But Cardiff City believes that FC Nantes was, via its agent Willie McKay, the sponsor of the private flight on which the footballer took a seat. Even if the transfer was effective at the time of the accident, as the Tas decided, “it was indeed the organization of this flight which caused the damage”, affirmed the Cardiff lawyer.
The Welsh club therefore took action before the Nantes commercial court to claim compensation for loss of income and other damage suffered by the club due to the death of the player. A previous estimate put these damages at 100 million euros, resulting in particular from the financial and reputational losses represented by Cardiff’s move from Division 1 to Division 2. “If Sala had been able to play, he would obviously have scored goals between January and June 2019 and Cardiff would have remained in the first division It would be unrealistic to think that he would not have scored any goals”, Mr Jones argued during a hearing in June 2023. In another procedure linked to the dispute between the. two clubs, the FIFA Football Court ordered Cardiff last year to pay FC Nantes the balance of the transfer of the Argentine player, at the time just over 11 million euros out of a total of 17 million.