SALA’S TRAGIC TALE

THE morning of Tuesday, 22 January 2019 is etched on my memory as if it were yesterday.

Waking to the news that a light aircraft had disappeared over the Channel en route from Nantes to Cardiff, my partner – a Cardiff City fan – turned to me and said: “Our new striker was coming from Nantes last night.”

I dismissed the link.

Surely there must be lots of planes making that journey all the time?

But within the hour, BBC Wales football correspondent Rob Phillips reported Cardiff were “seeking clarification” about the missing plane and there was “genuine concern” at the club.

Argentine Emiliano Sala had signed for Cardiff just three days earlier in a club record £15m transfer from FC Nantes. As that Tuesday unfolded, instead of welcoming their much-anticipated new striker to a training session, they were instead facing a barrage of enquiries from the world’s media about an unfolding tragedy.

It was soon confirmed Sala was on the Piper Malibu plane – piloted, it would emerge over the next 48 hours, by David Ibbotson – when it disappeared from radar north of the Channel Islands, just over an hour after take-off from Nantes Atlantique Airport. At that time, there were no signs of wreckage.

Few stories I’ve covered as a journalist captured the public’s attention the way this one seemed to.

Sala was a prolific striker revered by Nantes supporters.

For Cardiff fans he was the longed-for talismanic figure who might help save their struggling team. He was a talented, adored young footballer tragically lost just as his Premier League career was about to begin.

The level of interest in the story was such that my investigations team colleague Kayley Thomas and I were asked to start looking into the circumstances around the flight.

When Emiliano Sala was born, a month prematurely, on 31 October 1990, his parents were warned he might never be able to run because of the effect on his respiratory system.

But he exceeded all expectations, growing into a healthy and energetic child, close to his younger siblings Romina and Dario.

The transfer fee of £15m was a record for both Nantes and Cardiff.

A pervading sense of reluctance hangs over Sala’s story – from those last images of him bidding farewell to the club and community he’s happy in, bound for a new job he never applied for, to the poignant voice message he sent to his closest friends back in Argentina from the tiny Piper Malibu as it taxied on runway 3 of Nantes Atlantique Airport before take-off.

“I’m on the plane that looks like it’s falling apart,” he says as the engine can be heard in the background. “I’m heading to Cardiff because I start training with the new team tomorrow afternoon.

“If you don’t hear from me in the next hour and a half, I don’t know if somebody will look for me, because they won’t find me.

“Man, I’m scared.”

Almost four years on, the impact of Sala’s death continues to ripple out.

His father Horacio died from a heart attack three months after the crash, aged 58. He was separated from Sala’s mother and living with a new partner. Friends said he was heartbroken and struggling to come to terms with the loss of his son.

At the inquest into Sala’s death, his mother Mercedes said the family miss him “each day like the first day”. – BBC Sport.