Cardiff City wanted Fifa to hold Nantes “liable” over the death of Emiliano Sala, the Daily Telegraph can reveal.

A month after telling the Welsh club to hand over the first instalment of Sala’s £15million transfer fee to Nantes, the governing body has issued the grounds for its decision in the bitter row over who owned the striker when he was killed in a plane crash in January.

Seen by this newspaper, those grounds also reveal that Cardiff face a three-window transfer ban if they continue to refuse to pay or otherwise fail to overturn a September ruling by Fifa’s Players’ Status Committee (PSC) .

They have already announced plans to take the matter to the Court of Arbitration for Sport – and potentially beyond – following that ruling, which they accused of being predicated on “a narrow aspect of the overall dispute, without considering the full document presented” by their lawyers.

The grounds confirm the four-strong PSC of chairman Raymond Hack, Roy Vermeer, Anna Peniche and Castellar Guimaraes Neto “decided not to take into account any arguments brought forward by Cardiff in front of Fifa in relation to the circumstances surrounding the tragic passing of the player”.