After the death of Emiliano Sala, FC Nantes does not have to pay compensation to Cardiff City. The court found that the French club was not at fault for the plane crash in 2019.
Seven years after the death of Argentinian professional footballer Emiliano Sala in a plane crash over the English Channel, a court has dismissed the compensation claim brought by second division club Cardiff City against French club FC Nantes. The commercial court in Nantes in western France ruled that the French first division club was not at fault for the crash of the sports plane. It also ruled that Nantes had suffered non-material damage and ordered Cardiff to pay 480,000 euros.
Cardiff demanded 120 million euros
Cardiff had appealed to the court in Nantes in 2023 to claim around 120 million euros for the loss of income that it believed the club had suffered as a result of the death of the player, who had just transferred from Nantes to Cardiff. On January 21, 2019, the player, who was 28 years old at the time of the accident, died when the sports plane that was taking him to Cardiff, Wales, for his first training session with his new club crashed. He had opted for the charter flight in order to have more time to say goodbye to fellow players and friends.
The pilot of the plane involved in the accident is said to have had neither a license for commercial flights nor for night flights and, according to a telephone conversation published by the British broadcaster BBC, was aware of technical defects in the aircraft. The businessman who organized the flight with the single-engine plane has therefore already been sentenced to 18 months in prison for endangering the safety of an aircraft.
Disputes over the transfer deal
Among other things, the question arose as to whether Sala’s transfer had already been completed at the time of his death – a point of contention between the two clubs. After Cardiff disputed this, the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) ruled in 2022 that the transfer was definitely complete. The following year, Cardiff was obliged by FIFA to pay Nantes the remaining amount of the transfer fee for Sala, which at the time amounted to just over eleven million euros out of a total of 17 million euros.
Nantes FC’s lawyers were “very pleased” about the current dismissal of the compensation claim: “FC Nantes bears no responsibility for what happened and we welcome the fact that the court has listened to us and confirmed this in clear terms,” said lawyer Jerome Marsaudon. Cardiff City’s lawyer, Céline Jones, on the other hand, said that her side “must note with bitterness that the principles of transparency, integrity and security in professional soccer have not been reflected in this decision”.
