Mum, I can’t wait to get started
Emiliano so excited by future before he boarded plane
YESTERDAY, Cardiff City players and staff woke up ready to greet the player who was going to keep them in the Premier League.
Manager Neil Warnock had not just planned to build his team around Emiliano Sala but had rearranged his whole calendar.
On Monday he had given his players a day off to prepare for the planned double training session yesterday.
The idea was that Sala would spend as much time as possible on the training ground getting to know his new team-mates ahead of Cardiff ’s next game against Arsenal on Tuesday.
Instead, players turned on their phones to find a short email explaining that, in light of the ongoing developments, training was cancelled and everybody could spend the day away from the club with their families.
Some were already wide awake.
Sol Bamba, for instance, had been a key figure in the negotiations to bring Sala to Cardiff because the pair share the same agent.
He spent the night offering support and strength to the family and friends of the missing 28-year-old Argentinian.
The atmosphere around the club was described as numb.
In truth, only a small number of people at Cardiff had met Sala. Outside of the senior figures who negotiated the deal, only a couple of the injured players getting treatment were at the club’s Vale of Glamorgan training complex last Friday when Sala checked in for his medical before flying home. The rest of the squad had left to play in Saturday’s 3-0 defeat at Newcastle.
That defeat put Cardiff back into the relegation zone and highlighted why they needed Sala. But it emerged over the course of yesterday that actually none of those things matter.
The club had been praised for the way it hosted Leicester for the first game after the helicopter crash that took the life of owner Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha in October.
“All our thoughts are with you Cardiff City,” was the message from the East Midlands club’s official Twitter account.
Staff at the Welsh club had travelled the exact same route, potentially in the same PA-46 Malibu plane, while checking out Sala during numerous scouting missions.
Floral tributes quickly started to arrive at Cardiff City Stadium while in Nantes, yellow tulips and scarves were laid at the foot of the fountain in the Royal Square as collective prayers were said.
Those closest to Sala, though, were continuing to suffer in ominous silence. Sala’s new
employers were aware that the striker was particularly close to his mother back in Argentina and so there was a sense of hopelessness about what little news they were able to pass on through the day.
“We are worried, desperate, this took us all by surprise,” his father Horacio told Argentine radio. “I am speechless.”
His mother Mercedes said: “I’m very shaken right now. It [the plane] was the property of Cardiff City FC, it was the president’s plane.”
His mum said she spoke to her son just hours before he got on the plane and she said he was “very happy” because he was “in the best moment of his career” and couldn’t wait to get going. People within the game who knew Sala took it upon themselves to conjure up a few awkward words as the world came to terms with the horror of the situation. They painted a picture of a man full of vitality. Fulham boss Claudio Ranieri was Sala’s coach at Nantes last season.
The player had signed for Cardiff on the back of scoring 12 Ligue 1 goals in 19 games this term and Ranieri said: “He is a wonderful character. Knowing him as a person, he’s a fighter. He’s a fantastic footballer who always gave his best when we worked together in France.”
Those sentiments were echoed by former France international Willy Sagnol, who worked with Sala at Bordeaux. “He’s such a good guy, kind and generous and just a worker,” he said. But the most poignant message was the brief interview that had been put out by Cardiff on Saturday night after finishing the paperwork.
In subtitled Spanish, his earnest face bore a look of quiet determination. “I can’t wait to start training, meet my new team-mates and get down to work,” was all he said.
After such prolonged negotiations to get his dream move to the Premier League, it really was not that much to ask.
The world of football continues to pray for him.