The first meeting is this Thursday afternoon. The football clubs of Cardiff City and FC Nantes meet for a hearing before the Commercial Court of Nantes. Objective for the British club: claim more 100 million euros compensation after the accidental death of Emiliano Sala in 2019. This “pre-trial” hearing will allow the positions of the two parties to be discussed and a procedural timetable to be set.
The classic treatment of a dispute before the commercial court generally lasts 12 to 18 months “but it is too early to decide on a deadline”, specify the lawyers of FC Nantes, Jérôme Marsaudon and Louis-Marie Absil, of the firm. Reinhart Marville Torre. “Cardiff has been pursuing a very offensive and very warlike strategy against FC Nantes since the death of Emiliano Sala and has been hard-line in all its procedures”, indicate the latter, recalling that the Welsh club has already been “disavowed by FIFA (Players’ Status Committee) before failing before the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) and the Swiss Federal Court”.
An “umpteenth stratagem”
Argentinian player Emiliano Sala, 28, died in January 2019 in a plane crash over the English Channel while joining his new club, Cardiff City, to which he had been sold by FC Nantes. “Cardiff’s very great imagination has systematically been sanctioned by the courts and we will bring all the legal and factual elements to respond to this umpteenth scheme,” added the lawyers.
They specify that Cardiff has not yet paid FC Nantes the full transfer fee for the Argentine player, which amounted to 17 million euros. According to the lawyers, the club would have paid only the first third of this amount, ie 6 million euros.
Large sums claimed
According to the newspaper The Team who revealed the information on May 15, the Welsh club is claiming in court nearly 10 million additional euros corresponding “in particular to the reimbursement of the first draft with interest” of the transfer of Emiliano Sala “that Cardiff has already been summoned to settle”.
Cardiff City is also asking for the Nantes club to be ordered to pay it two million euros for the “reputational damage suffered” in this case, according to the sports daily. For their part, the lawyers of the FCN intend to request “reparation for the damage that these abusive procedures have caused to the Nantes club for four years”.