Squabble for money is typical of football

THE words of Joseph Nye Welch percolated around our head for a few hours after reading the headline: have you no sense of decency. Words that became famous overnight, words that shocked the conscience of a nation and helped stop Joe McCarthy’s witch-hunt.

Were that it was so simple that words could shock the conscience of the football industry. In black and white they appear every bit as tawdry and greedy and heartless as they actually are: Cardiff stunned as Nantes demand cash for Emiliano Sala.

At the time the demand was made Sala’s body had yet to be found. We can only imagine what his wife, his family and his friends were going through both knowing and not knowing what had befallen their beloved.

At the same time this human tragedy was playing out, as search parties fanned out across the English channel in search of the Argentine and the wreckage of the plane which was carrying him (and the pilot David Ibbotson who shouldn’t be forgotten either in this tragedy), FC Nantes were looking for their pound of flesh.

Truly football is a grubby business. Players are little more than commodities to these entities. No matter how much they’re paid, they’re assets first and human beings second.

Even the fact the accident occurred the way it did carries a particular resonance. In transit, shipped like chattel from one club to the next in a single propeller plane, which has a somewhat chequered safety record.

It does seem that the decision to travel on the little plane was Sala’s – Cardiff say they offered that he fly commercial – even so you do wonder whether the sometimes frantic nature of the transfer window was a factor in all of this.

Sala’s death should serve as a wake-up call to everybody involved in football. Should but probably won’t. When clubs are cold and calculating as Nantes seemingly have been, what chance does change (or decency) stand?