Cardiff looking to avoid paying the fee for Sala EXCLUSIVE
CARDIFF CITY have contacted other Premier League clubs in an attempt to establish whether there may be grounds to avoid paying the full £15million transfer fee being demanded by Nantes for Emiliano Sala, Sportsmail can reveal.
Letters sent in the past few days by lawyers acting for the club request help in ‘fighting off Nantes’ legal claim’, according to one source. They ask clubs for assistance in ‘sharing your knowledge of Sala as a player’. And in phrasing which makes it clear that Cardiff believe they may not have to pay all — or indeed any — of the record transfer fee, the correspondence from a Cardiff law firm describes Sala as ‘the player that Cardiff tried to sign’.
Details of the letters — which Cardiff last night confirmed were sent — emerged as manager Neil Warnock and chief executive Ken Choo arrived in Argentina for the player’s wake and funeral.
Sportsmail can reveal that Cardiff’s decision to approach Premier League clubs publicly linked with Sala is partly motivated by transfer broker Willie McKay’s admission in an email to the striker that he had sought to artificially inflate the price. McKay told Sala he had told the media of rival interest ‘just to stimulate interest in you’.
The club are seeking to establish whether there was indeed any interest at all from other clubs. McKay’s email to Sala listed Everton and West Ham as clubs he had linked the player to, though Crystal Palace, Fulham, Burnley and Wolves were also reported to be interested.
Sportsmail revealed two weeks ago how one club had been publicly linked to Sala simply on the basis of a text message being sent, signalling the player’s availability.
A second club was bemused to receive the letter from Cardiff’s lawyers suggesting they had also been linked.
‘This simply isn’t true in our case,’ said a source. ‘We never had an interest in Sala. We didn’t even watch him play.’
But Sala is by no means the first player to have been transferred after being artificially linked with other clubs.
This is one of the oldest tricks in the wheeler-dealer world of player acquisition. It is difficult to see how Cardiff can possibly cite this practice to avoid paying in full the first £5m tranche of the fee they had agreed with Nantes for the player.
Cardiff have said they will ‘do the right thing’ but have indicated they ‘first want full facts disclosed about what happened and the involvement of agents with Nantes in the deal’.
The number of brokers involved in the deal is also understood to have concerned them.
As well as McKay and his son Mark, whose Mercato Sports outfit was given a mandate by Nantes to find a buyer for Sala, the agent Baba Drame stood to gain from the £15m deal — which he boasted about on Instagram.
Sportsmail understands that Cardiff retain some belief that the transfer of the player had not been completed. They were still investigating last week whether he had been deregistered by Ligue 1 and registered by the Premier League. There is also a suggestion that personal terms had not been finalised.
Images of the player ‘signing’ released by club media on January 19 were staged. Sala simply held his pen over a blank sheet of paper with Cardiff chief executive Ken Choo looking on.
But our own inquiries have established that the transfer process was completed two days later, leaving the club with no way of avoiding meeting Nantes’ demand for payment.
The player’s International Transfer Certificate was registered with the FA of Wales on January 21. The Premier League has indicated that Sala was subsequently named in a Cardiff City squad list.
The registration of the ITC is the key event. Once complete, the player becomes the property of the buying club.