Cardiff City pays tribute to missing player Emiliano Sala
ADVERTISEMENTPlayers and fans at Cardiff City football club paid their respects to Argentine signing Emiliano Sala on Saturday before kick off against Bournemouth.
The packed and sombre stadium held a minute's silence before Cardiff's first home game since Sala and pilot David Ibbotson disappeared in a small plane over the English Channel last month.
Sala was announced as Cardiff's record €17.1 million signing after the team reached a deal with his previous club Nantes.
Sala returned to the French city to say goodbye to ex-teammates on January 21st before boarding the plane to Cardiff in the evening. His plane lost disappeared from radar near the Channel Islands.
An official search was called off after three days after rescuers said there was little chance anyone aboard the single-engine aircraft had survived.
Two seat-cushions that washed up on a beach in France are thought to come from the plane.
A private search for the missing plane paid for by fundraisers began on Sunday. It involves fishing boats and a survey vessel equipped with state-of-the-art equipment which will be used to search the seabed.
David Mearns, a marine scientist leading the search, said on Saturday that his team is working in cooperation with the AAIB (Air Accidents Investigation Branch).
"This is a relatively small search area... but there are complications in terms of it being a small plane, the bottom (of the sea) is very hard, there is lots of other wreckage out there, and we have the weather," said Mearns..
"We are working in the worst time. If this was the summer time our confidence level would be much higher, almost to the point of a guarantee."