Cardiff City have released a statement saying the Premier League club ‘continue to pray for positive news’ concerning club-record signing Emiliano Sala.<\/p>\n
Sala, the striker, was on board the plane that went missing over the English Channel on Monday evening, the French civil aviation authority have confirmed.<\/p>\n
Cardiff’s new signing was one of two people on the light aircraft travelling from Nantes to Cardiff which\u00a0disappeared from radar near Casquets lighthouse, Alderney at around 8:30pm on Monday.<\/p>\n
Guernsey Police said the Piper PA-46 Malibu, a single turbine engine aircraft, departed Nantes at 7.15pm.<\/p>\n
On passing Guernsey it “requested descent”, but Jersey air traffic control (ATC) lost contact with the plane while it was flying at 2,300ft.<\/p>\n
Guernsey Coastguard received an alert at 8.23pm from Jersey ATC that a light aircraft had gone off their radar approximately 15 miles north of Guernsey.<\/p>\n
Rescue teams were scrambled to the waters but were forced to call off the search at 2am “due to strengthening winds, worsening sea conditions and reducing visibility”.<\/p>\n
Searches of the area resumed later on Tuesday morning, involving five aircraft and two lifeboats, with authorities saying the missing plane had yet to be found.<\/p>\n
Channel Islands Air Search chief officer John Fitzgerald has said he is “not expecting to find anyone alive”.<\/p>\n
Guernsey Police, who had been providing updates on the search throughout the day, released their latest statement at 3:30pm.<\/p>\n
“One plane, one lifeboat are still searching,” it read. “Another plane will rejoin after refuelling.<\/p>\n
“1,155sq miles have been searched. A decision whether to search overnight will be taken an sunset.”<\/p>\n
A statement from\u00a0Cardiff City chairman Mehmet Dalman released on Tuesday morning read: \u201cWe are very concerned by the latest news that a light aircraft lost contact over the Channel last night.<\/p>\n
“We are awaiting confirmation before we can say anything further. We are very concerned for the safety of Emiliano Sala.”<\/p>\n
In the early afternoon Ken Choo, the club’s executive director and CEO, released a second statement.<\/p>\n
“We were very shocked upon hearing the news that the plane had gone missing,” it read. “We expected Emiliano to arrive last night into Cardiff and today was due to be his first day with the team.<\/p>\n
“Our owner,\u00a0Tan Sri Vincent Tan, and chairman,\u00a0Mehmet Dalman, are all very distressed about the situation.<\/p>\n
“We made the decision first thing this morning to call off training with the thoughts of the squad, management staff and the entire Club with Emiliano and the pilot.<\/p>\n
“All of us at Cardiff City FC would like to thank our fans, and the entire footballing family for their support at this difficult time.<\/p>\n
“We continue to pray for positive news.”<\/p>\n
A third statement is expected when further information is available.<\/p>\n
Sala’s father, Horacio, told Argentine TV:\u00a0“I’m desperate. I hope everything goes well.”<\/p>\n
His mother Mercedes said: “Here in Santa Fe, everyone is very emotional. We do not know what to think, it seems like a lie… the town is in shock.”<\/p>\n
Sala had been in Nantes to say goodbye to his former teammates having completed a move to Cardiff for a record fee last week.<\/p>\n
He had posted a photo to his Instagram and Twitter accounts on Monday afternoon posing with the rest of the Nantes squad.<\/p>\n
He captioned the photo: “The final [heart emoji] goodbye @FCNantes.”<\/p>\n
Sala completed a long-awaited move to Cardiff on Saturday, penning terms for an undisclosed fee that beats the previous club-record \u00a311million paid for Gary Medel in 2013.<\/p>\n
He had scored 13 league and cup goals for Nantes this season, to sit third in the Ligue 1 scoring charts behind Kylian Mbappe and Nicolas Pepe.<\/p>\n
Waldemar Kita, the Nantes president, released a statement of his own through the club’s website.<\/p>\n
He said: “I’m thinking of his friends, his family; I’m still in hope, he’s a fighter, it’s not over.<\/p>\n
“Maybe he’s somewhere, waiting for some news that we hope will be positive, we are very touched by all the support received since this morning.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Cardiff City have released a statement saying the Premier League club ‘continue to pray for positive news’ concerning club-record signing Emiliano Sala. Sala, the striker, was on board the plane that went missing over the English Channel on Monday evening, the French civil aviation authority have confirmed. Cardiff’s new signing was one of two people…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-270","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-football-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=270"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=270"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=270"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=270"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}