The plane with a famous football player disappeared over the English Channel: his body was found two weeks later

Footballer Sala flew to a new life, but died. He was finally found.

Photo: video frame YouTube / FC Nantes

Two weeks the plane, on board which was Emiliano Sala, lay at the bottom of the Channel. They could not find him the first time, they had to connect divers to the search, and they found the aircraft. And they removed one body from it - the body of the former French player “Nantes”, who was flying to a new life, in “Cardiff”. His dream to play in the English Premier League (Premier League) was not destined to come true.

Not young, not early

It looks like the Piper PA-46 Malibu began to shake before it took off. In any case, Sala hinted at this when he sent one of his latest messages to a friend. Football player himself had to shake: from the fear of flying and from the excitement of the coming new life - in Wales.

And surprisingly: they found each other. The tall player turned out to be rather plastic, his legs worked as it should, and the goals went, in general, stably. In two seasons in a row, he scored for Nantes 12 balls in the League-1, and in the current rally, he had all the same 12 balls, only he broke them for the first half of the season.

Throughout January, the 2019 of the Salu Pass “Cardiff” is one of the worst teams of the Premier League in all respects. The Argentine had to improve one of them - the implementation of scoring chances. According to the BBC study, only 10,7% of shots performed by Welsh players achieved their goal - this is the fifth result in the league since the end. Sala this season was especially good in the penalty area - he scored for every taste: with his foot, and head, and from the penalty spot.

The Welsh club offered Emiliano to buy a return ticket, but the player refused: an agent helped him rent a private plane and found a pilot - David Aybbotson. The agent's name is Mark McKay, and he did not represent the interests of Salah, but only helped Nantes in negotiations with Cardiff. His father, Willie, is a big football businessman, he worked with many football players and clubs and, in particular, organized flights for them. In a short time, Sale had to get from a small Nantes to a small Cardiff - and Willie McKay did him a favor.

Aybbotson arrived in Nantes on the Piper PA-46 Malibu on Saturday, January 19. The flight to Cardiff was scheduled for the evening of the 21. Sala walked around the city, talked with friends, cleaned things up and decided to rent a house. Everything went according to plan, the footballer was at the airport, where a small single-engine airplane was waiting for him. Sala saw him, hesitated a little, and when he sat down, he was scared. “I’m on a plane, and I think it’s going to fall apart right now,” the vocal Sala wrote down. Around 20: 30 Moscow time on Monday, January 21, Piper PA-46 Malibu disappeared from radar.

Searches on the surface began almost immediately, but there was no sense from them. The police first gave four options, only one of which provided for the death of Salah and the pilot of Aybbotson - it was necessary to reassure families and fans, to give them hope for the salvation of the missing. In parallel with this, people took to the streets in Nantes and Cardiff: they carried photographs of Sala, T-shirts and flowers.

In Nantes, the Argentine was treated with special trepidation and respect. Fans appreciated his desire to fight to the end and the ability to score from any position. During the first match after the player disappeared, the fans staged a performance in his honor, and the network began to remember what kind of person Emiliano was. They wrote about his passion for fenshuem and the desire to live in Africa after the end of his career. The fact that Sala, one of the most effective strikers of the beginning of the season-2018 / 2019, could be in Turkey in the summer, although he always dreamed of being in England.

On January 24, the police stopped looking for a plane carrying Sala. The chances that he survived were rated as extremely low. Debris was nowhere to be seen, the water temperature in the English Channel in January is about three degrees; no one will last long in such a way. There are no uninhabited islands in the English Channel, the pirates do not swim. If any cargo ship picked it up, everyone would know about it almost immediately. But there was no news.

Sad coincidences

Salah's family, to which he was strongly attached, was not going to give up. His parents did not expect to see his son alive, but it was important for them to get his body. In their support were the fans, sympathizers and fellow football players. A fundraising campaign was announced on the crowdfunding platform, and the necessary 330 thousand euros were found very quickly. February 3 divers began an underwater operation and soon found the plane at the bottom. Inside is the body. One thing.

On the night of February 7, the corpse was removed from the wreckage. The second body rescuers in the cockpit were made out, at the moment they decide how to deal with the aircraft itself. Operations are hampered by strong undercurrents, and the weather over the English Channel does not allow search engines to operate normally. But they promise: the process will continue in the near future, and in a month a detailed report will be issued. Then we will know exactly what happened with the Piper PA-46 Malibu during the flight.

From the bottom of the English Channel they raised the remains of Emiliano. Now parents have to bury their son, and the clubs - to solve the financial issue, at least to talk about money in such a situation is somehow embarrassing. All documents about the transfer have been drawn up, and in recent days the forward has formally been considered a player of the Welsh club. The tragedy does not negate the fact that Nantes should get their money.

In such a story, it seems that all events led to such an end, and pull out at least one link from the chain - everything could have gone differently. Admit Sala to fly the flight that Cardiff offered, and we probably would have considered him in the blue shirt for the Welsh club. Maybe he should have moved to Turkey at the beginning of the season. And in January, the Chinese claimed it, promised a lot of money - it would be enough for the rest of their lives. And Sala would have moved to Africa, as he wanted.

And he always wanted to play in England. But dreams don't always come true.

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