The police from the channel island of Guernsey, off the coast of which the aircraft flown by the argentine footballer Emiliano Sala has disappeared, announced on Thursday afternoon put an end to the research since Monday night. “We have reviewed all of the available information […] and we have taken the difficult decision to put an end to the search. “The police stressed, in a statement posted on its Twitter account, noting that the” chances of survival at this stage are very small “.

The father of the argentine footballer Emiliano Sala has requested that the search operations are continuing. “The only thing that I ask is that they continue to seek. It is not possible that it has disappeared as well, ” implored Horacio Sala. “We hope to have good news, that they can continue to look for him “, he added, speaking to journalists from his village of Progreso, in the north of Argentina.

The authorities in Guernsey have revealed the name of the driver disappeared : David Ibbotson, a native of the north of England. Wednesday morning, investigators were considering still that the player and David Ibbotson had been able to take refuge on the lifeboat that was in their device. But their statements were really hope in the end of the day. “If there was something to find, I think, as we were on the spot very quickly, that we would have had to find it. I’m not sure that there is something out there, ” said John Fitzgerald, the head of the rescue service, Channel Island Air Search.

flotsam

Tuesday, investigators had found debris floating in the water, without being able to say if they came from the plane of Sala, and three days after the disappearance, the circumstances of the tragedy still remained as mysterious. The club Cardiffa in any case specified that Sala had organised his own trip. We also know that Emiliano Sala had raised concerns about the state of the aircraft in a voice message sent to relatives.

The british agent Mark McKay told Sky Sports News have helped to organize the voyage of the footballer : “When Emiliano told me as well that his agent, Meïssa n’diaye, that he wanted to go back to Nantes after his medical examination and his signing on Friday, I started to look for a private flight to take him to Nantes Saturday morning. “”This evening, it was confirmed that a plane was available Saturday for Emiliano and could stay in Nantes until it gets back to Cardiff,” he explained. “Everything is pointing towards a tragic accident,” said the president of Cardiff Mehmet Dalman to the website Wales Online.

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A record chilling

A record now seems prescient. Emiliano Sala had sent an audio message to loved ones on WhatsApp shortly before his plane disappears. “That is what I fear !” announced the argentine footballer in worrying about the state of the aircraft. The words of the attacker, 28-year-old, sent over the messaging WhatsApp and revealed Tuesday night by the daily sports argentine Olé, appear in retrospect glaçantes, but are pronounced in a tone quite calm, and punctuated by yawns.

“I’m on the plane, it looks like it will fall apart, and I’m leaving for Cardiff,” said Sala. “If in an hour and a half you have no more news of me, I don’t know if we are going to send people to look for me, because they won’t find me, but know this. Dad, that is what I fear ! ” he adds, on a background evoking that of an aircraft.

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The legendary Diego Maradona, himself, has tried to combine this “bad luck terrible” by saying that it hoped, in a tone of world-weary, that the plane was ” in the wrong airport and that we will find him alive “, in an audio message relayed by the journalist Martin Arevalo on Instagram. A false track, since the british authorities had said they had ” called all the airfields in the south of England to find out if [the aircraft] had landed “.

Resumption of research

The single-engine Piper PA-46 Malibu borrowed by the player, running on the route Nantes-Cardiff, disappeared from radar Monday evening at about 20: 20 GMT, twenty kilometers to the north of the channel island of Guernsey. The air traffic control of the nearby island of Jersey said Monday night that the plane and its two occupants, who flew in a first time to 5 000 feet, had asked to get off and changed to 2 to 300 feet before escaping to radar. The research, which started Monday evening, lasted for “fifteen hours” and covered almost 3 000 square kilometres, according to police. The AAIB, the investigation office uk air accidents, conducting the investigation on the disappearance of the aircraft, with registration N264DB and registered in the United States.

Read also the Disappearance of Emiliano Sala : the Piper Malibu, a plane delicate

“Think the worst”

If it is dropped, ” the airplane would have been damaged, in which case there is no hope “, said Tuesday night at the Agence France-Presse John Fitzgerald, director-general of the relief agency maritime Channel Islands Airsearch. In addition, ” the temperature of the water is so cold at the moment, if they [the passengers] were in the water, the cold would now be severely affected “. “The hours go by and I don’t know anything, this makes me think the worst” : the despair of the father of the player, Horacio, in tears at the time to speak to the press from Argentina on Tuesday night, said a lot about the chances of survival of his son.

Prayers

The 16th of finale of Cut of France of Nantes against the Entente SSG (3rd division), which is scheduled for Wednesday, has been postponed to Sunday, and the French football has received communion Tuesday, with many messages of support from clubs and players in the game. In Nantes, hundreds of people have laid flowers in tribute to their leading scorer, the author of 12 league goals in half a season. The training centre of the club, a giant portrait of the player has been installed to enable the public to gather.

” Wherever you may be, we think of you #PrayForSala “, was released on Wednesday, the FC Nantes on his Twitter account, where the coat of arms of the club has been replaced by a picture of the attacker. “I pray to Emiliano and his family,” responded his former coach at Nantes, Claudio Ranieri. In Cardiff, the emotion was also immense and the director of the club, Ken Cho, said he is ” shocked “.

On social networks, messages of support were pouring in, and a controversy, with the photo tweetée Tuesday by the star Cristiano Ronaldo : you see him a selfie, smiling, aboard a plane. “Not the right day for this tweet. Not really “, he responded to the former English player Gary Lineker.

Read also the Disappearance of Emiliano Sala : the concern of his loved ones

Arrived young in France and trained in Bordeaux, and then loaned out to various clubs (Orleans, Niort, Caen), Sala was eventually signed in Nantes in 2015 for one million euros, where he was able to make people forget about his gait a little awkward and his technique rudimentary, thanks to a realism that is precious. After seeing vanish the possibility of a transfer in Turkey, Galatasaray, this summer, he had finally got a good output in the mercato of winter, much to the chagrin of the coach Vahid Halilhodzic, with which it had woven a strong relationship. On Monday, he had returned to Nantes to take his last business, before joining Cardiff permanently. He had posted a photo of him surrounded by his ex-teammates, smiling as always.

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