Hope almost gone for missing Argentine footballer Emiliano Sala

The search continues for the missing plane taking Argentine soccer player Emiliano Sala to his new team in Wales.

FC Nantes supporters gather and lay flowers in Nantes for missing Argentine forward Emiliano Sala. Picture: AFP

The search for the missing plane taking Argentine soccer player Emiliano Sala to his new team in Wales was due to restart this morning but authorities are not expecting to find any survivors in the English Channel.

Police said floating objects had been seen in the water but they were unable to confirm whether they were from the light plane that disappeared from radar on Monday night off the coat of Guernsey as it made the journey from ­Nantes in western France.

Sala, 28, had spent the previous hours farewelling his teammates at the French city’s soccer team after Cardiff City signed him for a club-record fee last week.

“After all this time, the weather’s quite cold, the water is very cold out there … I am not expecting anyone to be alive,” Channel ­Islands Air Search chief officer John Fitzgerald said.

“We just don’t know how it disappeared at the end of yesterday. It just completely vanished.”

Guernsey police said that if any passengers had landed on water, “the chances of survival are at this stage, unfortunately, slim”.

Britain’s Coastguard received an alert at 8.23pm on Monday from air traffic control in Jersey, the largest of the Channel Islands, after it failed to make contact with the Piper PA-46 plane with two people on board, Guernsey police said.

The French civil aviation authority confirmed Sala was one of the people. Authorities have been searching for 15 hours. They suspended the search later on Tuesday after the sun set.

Sala’s last post on Instagram was a picture on Monday with Nantes players alongside a message that translates as “the last goodbye”.

Cardiff announced it had signed Sala for a reported £15 million ($27m) four-year contract. The English Premier League did not say if the transfer had been completed.

A powerful and direct player, Sala is the fifth-highest scorer in the French league.

Nantes was due to play Entente Sannois in the French Cup today (Australian time) but the third-tier club said it the match was postponed until Sunday.

AP