FC Nantes ‘negligence cost’ Cardiff City’s Emiliano Sala’s life

The football club which sold Emiliano Sala to Cardiff City before he died en route in a plane crash is “pretending not to be responsible” for the circumstances of his death, his mother has told a French court.

Sala, along with pilot David Ibbotson, died in January 2019 when the aircraft in which they were travelling from Nantes to Cardiff crashed in the English Channel.

The Argentine striker, 28, had signed for Cardiff City for £15m two days previously, and the Welsh club are now pursuing FC Nantes for around £100m in damages.

Cardiff City and FC Nantes presented their case to a commercial court in Nantes, western France, on Monday and a decision is expected at a hearing on 30 March.

Cardiff City has claimed the agent who arranged the fateful flight, Willie McKay, was acting on behalf of FC Nantes during Sala’s transfer, a claim that the French club deny.

The club has claimed losses of more than 120m euros (£104m) in relation to Sala’s death, and claimed the striker could have kept the club in the Premier League.

FC Nantes’ lawyer, Jerome Marsaudon, said: “It is sad to see that Cardiff have exploited this tragedy and turned it into a genuine legal farce”, adding “nothing in this case justifies holding FC Nantes liable”.

In a statement on Tuesday, Sala’s mother Mercedes Taffarel said she had been unable to attend the hearing but backed the south Wales club’s stance.

“Hearing about the way FC Nantes pleaded its case is repulsing,” she said.

“Willie McKay used his son to close a juicy deal when his licence was revoked.

“FC Nantes pretending not to be responsible is appalling.

“The negligence of FC Nantes and its agent at the time cost my son his life.

“All I want is for justice to be done.”

The Bluebirds have argued that Nantes, through its intermediary, agent Willie McKay, was the organiser of the private flight on which Sala was travelling – even though McKay was banned from being an agent at the time.

Cardiff City’s lawyer, Olivier Loizon, told the court Mr McKay “could not have been unaware of the illegality of the flight” and argued that the agent had acted with “negligence”.

“Whatever the ultimate cause of the accident, [Sala] should not have been on the flight,” he added.

FC Nantes disputed “the existence of any wrongdoing, a causal link between the hypothetical wrongdoing and the damages, and then the damages themselves”, a representative of club president Waldemar Kita said before the hearing.

The French club have not responded to Ms Taffarel’s later statement.

Neither Willie McKay or Mark McKay have responded publicly to this week’s hearing, or Ms Taffarel’s statement.

Monday’s hearing was the latest step in various legal proceedings since the deaths of Sala and David Ibbotson.

After the pilot of the flight they took was found to have been unlicensed, the man who organised it – plane operator David Henderson – was found guilty in 2021 of endangering the safety of an aircraft, and sentenced to 18 months in prison.

Cardiff City were also forced by FIFA and a ruling at the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) to pay FC Nantes the full £15m transfer fee for Sala, after it was deemed that it had been finalised before his death.