In case you needed a reminder that football is still business, then here you are.

When the plane carrying Emiliano Sala and pilot David Ibbotson went missing, and the days ticked by, it became clear that neither was going to emerge from the tragedy alive.

The football world mourned, but we all knew that once the dust settled, the thorny issue of the £15 million transfer fee was going to have to be resolved.

Nantes have now come knocking, and Cardiff City are not impressed with the timing. Sky News reports:

Nantes have started legal action against Cardiff City, asking for the first payment in the £15m deal to buy Emiliano Sala, Sky sources say.

The French club is demanding that the instalment, understood to be more than £5m, is transferred to them immediately.

Sky Sports News understands that Cardiff City feel they should wait for the salvage operation and the investigation into the plane crash in the Channel to end before any payments are made.

Cardiff have not yet paid any of the fee, a record for the club, for the Argentinian striker.

Privately Cardiff believe there are questions that still need answering, such as over the ownership of the Piper Malibu aircraft which crashed north of Guernsey on 21 January.

The Premier League club is also concerned about reports the plane tried to take off three times before eventually taking to the air.

Cardiff received the first lawyer’s letter more than a week ago, before the wreckage of the plane had even been located, which was followed up by a series of phone calls between the two clubs.

Not surprisingly, fans of the Welsh club are incensed, with Cardiff City supporters club spokesman Vince Alm venting his fury:

“The timing is all wrong. The families still haven’t had any closure and they’ve seen reports of a legal case between the football clubs being started.

“I don’t know who’s advising Nantes but they are ill-advised to start this now. It has to be sorted out who pays the money but the timing is all wrong and they need to do it after the investigation.”

I would say he has a point, because it was only yesterday that a body was pulled from the plane wreckage, and authorities have yet to confirm whether the body was Sala’s or Ibbotson’s.

Fans of the game don’t need reminding of just how predatory football agents have become (they’re right up there with players diving and feigning injury on the list of things that drive us mad), but the Sala transfer has once again exposed the behind-the-scenes skullduggery that these deals often involve.

This from the Telegraph:

[Sala] was convinced to sign for Cardiff City after the agent Willie McKay sent him an email suggesting he planted misleading stories linking him with West Ham and Everton.

In messages giving unique insight into the vast figures and politics behind a Premier League transfer, McKay also suggests the player’s mother could claim £1million if he agreed to sign from Nantes. McKay then tells Sala that Neil Warnock has “fallen in love with you” because the Argentinian is a “typical English centre-forward, like Drogba or Alan Shearer”…

McKay admits making arrangements for the doomed flight, having told his usual pilot David Henderson: “Dave, I need a plane.” However, unbeknownst to McKay, part-time engineer Dave Ibbotson, 59, was at the controls when the Piper Malibu went missing on January 21 after leaving Nantes for Cardiff.

In plain English, McKay manufactured Sala’s move to Cardiff, when the player was happy at his club in Nantes, and then half-arsed the travel plans.

Finally, if you have a heart, this picture should tug at it, which was posted to Facebook by Sala’s sister, Romina. It was simply captioned “Nala is waiting for you too… ❤‌”:

The footballer got Nala in 2015, and the pair were apparently inseparable. The Argentinian had taken Nala to kennels and was in the process of moving her to Wales to live with him.

[sources:sky&telegraph&stuff]