March 31 – A French judge has dismissed Cardiff City’s claim for more than £100m in damages against FC Nantes – the latest ruling in a long-running legal battle following the death of Emiliano Sala in 2019.
Seven years on from the crash that claimed the lives of Sala and pilot David Ibbotson, Cardiff had been seeking €122m (£106m), arguing the striker’s death contributed directly to their relegation from the Premier League and wider financial damage. Cardiff now play in the English third tier.
The court in Nantes rejected that argument, ruling the Ligue 1 club bore no responsibility for the flight and that Cardiff had not suffered reputational harm. It went further, ordering the Welsh club to pay €300,000 in legal fees and moral damages.
Cardiff’s case centred on the role of intermediary Willie McKay, who the club argued had organised the fatal journey. While the court accepted McKay acted as an agent for Nantes, it concluded he did not arrange the flight itself or knowingly breach aviation rules.
“It’s difficult to understand how the court considers that Willie McKay did not organise the flight, given that he himself said that he did,” said Céline Jones, a lawyer representing Cardiff.
Jones added: “We initiated this process so that the full truth would come to light in this case and out of respect for the memory of Emiliano Sala. Today, we bitterly observe that the principles of transparency, integrity, and safety in professional football have not prevailed in this decision.”
Cardiff have one month to lodge an appeal against the verdict, which could take up to two years.
“Nantes are in no way responsible for the incident that occurred,” said the club’s lawyer, Jérôme Marsaudon. “We are pleased the court listened to us and confirmed this in clear terms.”
Previous rulings have consistently gone against Cardiff. FIFA and the Court of Arbitration for Sport both found the transfer valid at the time of Sala’s death, with Cardiff subsequently ordered to pay the outstanding balance of the €17m fee.
Contact the writer of this story, Harry Ewing, at moc.l1774954082labto1774954082ofdlr1774954082owedi1774954082sni@g1774954082niwe.1774954082yrrah1774954082
PakarPBN
A Private Blog Network (PBN) is a collection of websites that are controlled by a single individual or organization and used primarily to build backlinks to a “money site” in order to influence its ranking in search engines such as Google. The core idea behind a PBN is based on the importance of backlinks in Google’s ranking algorithm. Since Google views backlinks as signals of authority and trust, some website owners attempt to artificially create these signals through a controlled network of sites.
In a typical PBN setup, the owner acquires expired or aged domains that already have existing authority, backlinks, and history. These domains are rebuilt with new content and hosted separately, often using different IP addresses, hosting providers, themes, and ownership details to make them appear unrelated. Within the content published on these sites, links are strategically placed that point to the main website the owner wants to rank higher. By doing this, the owner attempts to pass link equity (also known as “link juice”) from the PBN sites to the target website.
The purpose of a PBN is to give the impression that the target website is naturally earning links from multiple independent sources. If done effectively, this can temporarily improve keyword rankings, increase organic visibility, and drive more traffic from search results.
