Welsh football club Cardiff City’s claim for damages in the financial dispute following the death of Argentine striker Emiliano Sala has been dismissed.
The commercial court in Nantes decided this on Monday. Cardiff filed a lawsuit in 2023 to demand 122 million euros from Sala’s previous club FC Nantes for loss of income.
Instead, Cardiff was ordered to pay Nantes €300,000 in compensation. In January 2019, a plane with Sala on board crashed into the English Channel two days after signing in Cardiff, and the pilot was also killed. Since then, there has been disagreement between the clubs about the financial consequences.
FC Nantes’ lawyers said they were “very pleased” with this decision: “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 words,” said lawyer Jérôme Marsaudon.
Céline Jones, Cardiff City’s lawyer, said her side “acknowledged with bitterness that the principles of transparency, integrity and security in professional football were not reflected in this decision.”
One point of contention throughout the legal dispute was, among other things, the question of whether Sala’s transfer had already been completed at the time of his death.
Cardiff had doubted this. In 2022, the International Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) ruled that the change was definitely complete.
The following year, world football governing body FIFA obliged Cardiff to pay Nantes the balance of Sala’s transfer fee, which at the time amounted to just over 11 million euros out of a total of 17 million euros.
