Argentine professional soccer player Emiliano Sala went missing after riding a small passenger plane over the English Channel on Monday night. Sala was fresh off the signing with his would-be team, Cardiff City. He was their biggest ever signing and was supposed to significantly aid in both attacking and defending. For Nantes, he was able to tally 48 goals in 130 matches, demonstrating the skill he was being targeted by Cardiff City for. 

 He was coming back from saying his final goodbyes to his former Nantes teammates in France. He was set to fly back in a small Piper PA-46 aircraft. Sala voiced fears of the security of the plane in a WhatsApp message he sent while onboard, reading,  “I am here in the plane that seems is about to fall to pieces…. I’m scared.” The small aircraft sent reports to air traffic control reporting a change in altitude, from 5,000 feet down to 2,300 feet, somewhere over the Channel Island of Guernsey. After that, contact was lost and search and rescue operations had begun to search for them in the chance that both the captain and Sala were alive, however, after not finding concrete evidence of any wreckage of the plane and the lack of any luck scanning the sea, hope had begun to be lost. 

“Sadly, I really don’t think, personally, there is any hope,” said Chief Officer of Channel Islands Air Search, John Fitzgerald,  “At this time of the year, the conditions out there are pretty horrendous if you are actually in the water.” 

On Wednesday the status of the search was changed to recovery, as there is almost no chance that Sala and his pilot were able to survive the crash, weather, and the ocean.