One of the lads
Warnock: Sala was a scruffy footballer, I knew he would fit in at Cardiff
Missing footballer was set to be a sure-fire hit in the Welsh capital following £15m move from Nantes
HE was a bit of a scruffy footballer, off the field and on it, Emiliano Sala. Cardiff boss Neil Warnock told him as much.
Warnock said: “He had holes in his trousers and looked like a tramp. And I said to him that he’s what I call an ugly footballer, a scruffy footballer.
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“I said that is why he will fit in well with us, not just because of his gear but because he gave everything, 100 per cent, every time he played.
“He didn’t always play well, but he scored some great goals and he was just so looking forward to the challenge of coming here.
“I said he’d fit in well with our team, because we’ve got quite a few like him. That’s the memory I’ll have, we had a laugh.
“He said, ‘I’ll score you goals’, and I said, ‘I know you will’.”
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Sala is Cardiff’s club-record signing — but £15million does not buy you world-class any more. What it buys you is hope.
Hope fuels the transfer market. And hope is rarely more pure, or anticipation more keen, than when a club makes a record buy.
Yet Sala, a 28-year-old Argentinian striker from French club Nantes, has been missing, along with pilot Dave Ibbotson, since their plane lost contact over the English Channel last Monday night — two days after his signing was announced.
Unless there is a miracle, and a crowd-funded search party finds Sala alive, he will be recalled as a hope tragically lost.
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Most of his team-mates never met him — and most supporters never saw him play live.
And yet — as Cardiff prepare to visit Arsenal tonight in their first match since Sala’s tragic disappearance — they evidently feel his loss deeply.
It is etched across the face of Warnock who, even after almost 40 years in management, had been excited about Sala’s signing.
Warnock, 70, added: “When you’ve worked hard for two months to get somebody like that, you really feel that this is a turning point.
“They are massive blows, but we would rather have Emiliano and get relegated. Life is far more important than football.”
Cardiff are 18th in the Premier League, only two points from safety.
Yet avoiding relegation is not the sort of safety anyone is interested in any more.
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Warnock will pick a team to face Arsenal based on who he believes can cope best psychologically.
On Thursday, the transfer deadline will arrive — but Warnock admits his heart is not in it.
The Bluebirds boss is a divisive figure but has always been a more complex — and likeable — character than the one you often see scowling and ranting at referees.
As he broke his public silence over Sala, Warnock spoke with admirable lucidity and touching warmth — but it was clear he has been badly affected.
Not least those horrendous, ‘What ifs?’ Like what if he had insisted on Sala travelling to Newcastle to watch his new team-mates play on Saturday 19, rather than allowing him to say farewell to old friends on a fateful journey to Nantes?
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Warnock added: “I do keep thinking back. I said to him, ‘Why don’t you come up to Newcastle and watch us play?’.
“You’re not asking yourself, ‘Should I have made him come up?’, because it’s after the event. But he wanted to go back and see his Nantes team-mates, his family and get his belongings, so that’s what happened.
“I think everyone is wise after the event. We all wish we could have done this or that.
“Obviously things will be investigated in great detail — but I don’t get involved in that.
“I have thought many a time, ‘Should I have insisted on him coming up?’. But that’s wrong as well, you shouldn’t. I can’t do that. But it does go through your mind.”
FC Nantes coach Vahid Halilhodzic says Sala’s team mates may struggle to keep focus
It was often agonising to hear this hard-bitten man wrestling with his thoughts and striving to hold back tears.
Warnock said he had made similar trips on similar aircrafts and believed he had flown with Ibbotson, who had been “an excellent pilot”.
Just three months ago, Leicester owner Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha perished with four others when his helicopter crashed just outside the King Power Stadium — and Cardiff would be Leicester’s next opponents.
Warnock explained: “That was another week where I’d never experienced anything like it.
“To have two in such a short space of time . . .
“The emotional effect that the Leicester incident had on us — and that wasn’t even our club — but the game had become almost irrelevant. This week’s been a lot more difficult, especially for myself, because I had been talking to Emiliano.”
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Warnock has spent the majority of his life motivating footballers — and has achieved a record eight promotions.
Yet for the time being, he speaks as if all those feats now rank somewhere between trivial and futile.
Warnock added: “It’s as if the game of football is somewhere else. It’s not really around us. It’s a surreal thing.
“When you’re a football manager you wake up at 4am thinking of your team selection and trivial things — but this is way beyond anything like that.
“The players need some sort of distraction because it’s so much doom and gloom and sorrow.
“It’s so sombre around the club that it’s like we need a game to get firing again.”
The tragedy has made Warnock doubt his own footballing future.
He admitted: “I know I look shattered and I know my age is not helping me. But I don’t think it’s all down to my age.
“It almost feels cruel, the Leicester thing and now this. You think once in a lifetime is enough. But to have two, it does take it out of you, makes you look at yourself, why you are in the game.
“I think you’ve just got to seek help yourself under these kind of circumstances. Who motivates the motivator?
“You are the leader of the pack. You have to show that leadership. I think I’m OK, when I’m in the public eye and with the players.
“My biggest problem is when I’m on my own or at home with my wife Sharon — and little things trigger it.
“You feel absolutely shattered. Even when you’ve had a sleep you wake up tired.
“It’s to do with stress, the doc says. But it doesn’t seem to get any easier at the moment.”
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