Collateral victim of the illegal sports betting scandal, Newcastle took a big blow to the liver. Last summer, the Magpies paid no less than €70 million to snatch Sandro Tonali from AC Milan. A very expensive recruit, but who has given full satisfaction since the start of the season (8 Premier League matches, 1 goal). And then, everything changed shortly before mid-October. While he was with the Nazionale, Tonali was removed from the transalpine selection (along with Nicolo Zaniolo) after being questioned by the police as part of an investigation into illegal betting.
Support shown for Tonali
Clearly, the 23-year-old midfielder was suspected of being involved in betting on AC Milan matches when he played for the Rossoneri. Then everything accelerated. Tonali confessed everything and chose to cooperate with the justice system to try to avoid the worst. Which did not prevent him from being punished very harshly. On October 26, the boss of the Italian federation (FIGC), Gabriele Gravina, formalized the suspension of the Toon for a period of ten months. “An agreement has already been reached between the federal prosecutor’s office and Sandro Tonali, which took place before the referral, so it must be endorsed by me, which I have already done. A plea bargain is planned for 18 months including 8 months of rehabilitation activities, some therapeutic activities and at least 16 face-to-face meetings as testimony. »
The Toons have since confirmed that the sanction against Tonali extends internationally. Result: the Transalpin is unusable until August 2024 and will miss the Euro, if Italy participates. Today, the time is now for reflection, particularly on the Newcastle side. Will the Magpies turn to AC Milan to demand accountability? Will Tonali be paid at full rate (he receives around €8 million/year, editor’s note)? Recently, the English media indicated that Newcastle was studying the possibility of reducing the emoluments of its player during the suspension. Faced with all these questions, the sporting director of Tyneside, Dan Ashworth, broke the silence to explain the position of his club on different points. Without saying too much either.
Newcastle didn’t see it coming
Concerning Tonali’s salary, we will not know more. “A player’s contractual situation is private and confidential. All I can say is that Sandro has been outstanding since this happened and has been fully cooperative. He demonstrated exceptional professionalism in this context. Beyond that, I cannot comment because it is private and confidential”he confided to Chronicle. Always ready to defend Tonali in front of the cameras, would Newcastle however have questioned his arrival in England if he had been informed last summer of this investigation targeting Tonali? Ashworth admitted the story might have been slightly different. “I think if you know a player is going to be out for 10 months, whether it’s through a medical injury or something like that, you’re either going to have to review the contract or structure it in a different way . But as a player, based on his performance, his character and his personality, I have no reservations. » I promise, Newcastle does not regret having hired Sandro Tonali. On the other hand, the Toons now want to know if the Rossoneri were aware of this affair when they negotiated this €70 million transfer.
“These are things that happen in football, but not in this context. For me, from the moment this happened, I questioned myself. What could we have done better? What could I have done better? What lessons can we learn from this? Could we have known? Should we have known? It’s really difficult for me to know what other clubs do or don’t do: it’s very difficult for me to be interested in what other clubs know or don’t know. All we can do is look at our own internal investigation and our own internal process. This is a very difficult question for me to answer, because I don’t know. It was a huge shock, a huge surprise. We weren’t used to dealing with it. It came out of nowhere”. While awaiting the result of the internal investigation, we are perhaps not safe from a new twist in this affair.
