Cardiff City fails in £100m claim against Nantes over Emiliano Sala death

Cardiff City’s £100m Emiliano Sala compensation claim has been dismissed by a French judge.

The League One club had been claiming over £100m in compensation for loss of income and damages after footballer Sala died when a plane carrying him to Wales for his transfer to the Premier League crashed into the English Channel in 2019.

The £15m fee from to Nantes, and the events that led to and followed the clash, have been the subject of battles since.

But a commercial court in Nantes ruled on Monday the claim that Cardiff was due compensation from the French Ligue 1 club following Sala’s death was unsuccessful.

The court dismissed City’s £104m claim and ordered the team, who got relegated from the Championship last season, to pay around £400,000 in legal fees to the struggling Ligue 1 side.

The court also ruled that Nantes suffered moral damage with Cardiff to pay £260,000 in costs, according to reports.

Cardiff City fail in claim

Cardiff had fallen on the wrong side of rulings by Fifa, the Court of Arbitration for Sport and Switzerland’s supreme court over a number of hearings since the death of Sala in 2019.

The crash, during the January transfer window if that year, saw Sala and plane pilot David Ibbotson die near Guernsey, with the legal challenges stemming from belief within Cardiff that the Argentinian could have kept City in the Premier League. Sala was 28 at the time and died in a single-engine Piper Malibu aircraft.

The flight was later found to be unlicensed, with trip organiser David Henderson sentenced to 18 months in prison for endangering the safety of an aircraft.

Cardiff said in December that “this case isn’t about harming football: it’s about protecting its integrity”.

They added: “Because Emiliano Sala deserved better. Because football deserves better.”

Cardiff City are currently second in League One, looking to bounce straight back into the Championship.