Soccer / emiliano sala

As expected, Cardiff City finally decided not to pay Nantes for Emiliano Sala transfer. Cardiff City said that the contract is not legally binding due to unfulfilled conditions and Sala wasn't registered as a Premier League player. On January 19, Cardiff City announced Emiliano Sala transfer from Nantes for £15m, a record transfer fee in the club history. Unfortunately, Sala never landed on his new club, his plane crashed and sunk in the English Channel on January 21 when he was headed to Cardiff. His body was later recovered, while the pilot's body is still missing. The crash was a tragedy, of course. Lives have lost, someone lost their family and friend. But for the two clubs, £15m just sunk at the bottom of the sea. Around two weeks after the crash, Nantes issued a payment request to Cardiff for Sala transfer. The body of the player was just found by the time, but money is money. Cardiff said they were going to pay after they collect more facts surrounding the crash. By this point, I already knew that they weren't going to pay. They were collecting facts to support their argument in court, not to clear things. As a business entity, there is no way they would pay £15m for nothing. In a financial year ending 31 May 2018, Cardiff City made a £34m loss, jumped from £15m in the previous 12 months. Their promotion to the Premier League made them pay around £23m for bonuses to players and others. Moreover, the total market value of Cardiff City's squad is only £97.5m, and £15m for Sala was their record transfer. That's more than 15% of their total squad market value. For nothing. With these figures, I already knew that Cardiff wouldn't pay the transfer fee and would prefer to go to the court to settle things. Let's see how FIFA handle the dispute between Nantes and Cardiff City. This might be a precedent for the future regarding the transfer of players. Someone has to pay, and that's not going to be us~