Tonali says he is a changed man – but is he the same player?

On pitch one at Newcastle United’s Darsley Park training ground, now hidden from public view by trees purposefully grown during the past two years to avert the prying eyes of the public, Sandro Tonali readied himself for his first competitive game of football in nine months.
He was wearing his No8 shirt and the club’s new Adidas kit, and Burnley were the visitors for a game that had to be deemed a training match, without any form of recognised officials, for it to fall outside the strict guidelines of the ban that had been imposed last year when he was found guilty of breaking betting rules on football matches.
It felt like the beginning of the end of a nightmare for Tonali, and the club he joined last summer. “He played well,” a club source revealed. “It was a relief for him to be playing again.”
He will return for real on Wednesday night against Nottingham Forest at the City Ground, in the second round of the Carabao Cup. When Tonali moved from AC Milan, the club where his father, Giandomenico, still has a season ticket, for £55million, no one could have foreseen such a low-key fixture having such significance.
Only then, in a game he could start, will the trauma of this ten-month period in the 24-year-old’s life begin to lift. It began with being taken away from the Italy camp in Coverciano in October by federal prosecutors, and being unable to return to his international team-mates; that same month he received an 18-month ban for breaking betting rules by gambling on matches from 2021-22 through to 2023-24, including bets made after his move to Newcastle. Then, in May, came a suspended two-month ban from the English FA for contravening betting rules.
Eight months of the suspension from the Italian FA were commuted to a “therapeutic plan to help him recover from gambling addiction”. It meant there have been 16 public appearances in Italy, at sports associations and federal territorial centres. He has spoken with great eloquence of the suspension, and his problem. In May he addressed four groups at the Salvemini State Scientific High School in Bari and then later young footballers at federal training centres in Bitetto.
“I made a mistake, and I found help,” he told the high school children. “Don’t hide from your problems, talk about it. Hiding behind the barriers of a problem is never the solution. We need to talk about it instead. Get help.
“My true wealth is not million-dollar contracts, but being surrounded by people who love me and continue to prove it to me every day.
“I was recently in a factory. I was able to reflect on those who work ten hours a day, just to bring home a salary. I understood many precious things. One above all: if a worker lost his job, his entire family would pay the consequences. Well, this is also why I consider myself lucky. I made a mistake, but I didn’t lose anything.”
He has lost time, however.
He has also lost money, not just through his addiction and the €20,000 (about £16,800) fine handed to him in October. Tonali, who took a pay cut of €500,000 to stay at the San Siro in 2021 after fluctuating form in his first season there, repeated the act at Newcastle as soon as he was suspended. Club sources say the self-imposed reduction in salary from his £130,000-a-week contract was “substantial”.
For his part, there has been an increase in workload and desire in training. Tonali had played only 12 games for Newcastle before his suspension. He was still adjusting to the extraordinary pace of the English game, so he has worked with a speed coach during his absence, on acceleration and changing direction, and there have been adjustments to his running style. Eddie Howe, the Newcastle head coach, wanted him fitter and stronger, and that too has been addressed. There have also been many hours spent with Newcastle’s head of psychology, Ian Mitchell.
The Times understands that Tonali has fulfilled the full 16 appearances as part of his punishment. He also completed the therapy that was part of his suspension.
There is a real desire for the player to focus on his football now and he is expected to be called into the Italy squad for their Nations League games with France and Israel on September 6 and September 9. There is a desire to make up for the lost time, since the moment his world came crashing down, when he was first questioned and when his agent, Giuseppe Riso, revealed his client had a gambling addiction.
“It’s difficult to go back to from my side,” Howe said of the period around the revelation of his gambling. “It was generally a feeling of first just being worried about the person, genuinely.
“When you see the media headlines and you know the player is facing this moment, that is not easy for any person, so it was really just to help him and protect him and of course we knew the consequences for us, but that was secondary to him himself.
“Sandro has been through it with all of us. It’s not just me, the staff have supported him and he’s leant on different people in that time, because naturally he has been more with the sports science team in certain moments than he has been with us, because we might have been away and playing games and travelling, so I think he has leant on different people.
“It definitely isn’t just me — the other coaches, and his team-mates have probably been the most important people who he’s been spending most time with.”
He has adapted to life in the North East. There have been walks along the coast in North Tyneside, from Tynemouth to Cullercoats, with his partner, Juliette Pastore. There have been ice creams at Scoopalicious, a static stall on the sea front, and coffees near his home in Gosforth.
Tonali revealed his addiction has encouraged others to address their own problems. “I met a lot of people with ordinary jobs, especially in Newcastle, who had this problem and who had never spoken before now, and they did so when it all came out,” he said.
“When my problem was made public, after this they decided to get help and stop bottling things up. The biggest step is being able to talk about this huge thing you’re carrying inside of you that you’ve never done before and you don’t have the courage to do. You have this enormous sort of block and this is the biggest step to take to resolve this problem.”
He admitted he has spoken to Howe every day since he was suspended. “I’m excited to play,” he added. “I think I’m a new player, and I want to say thank you to the gaffer.”
Howe says he shares similarities with the player, in how much he keeps his emotions to himself, but Tonali has charmed those seeking selfies and autographs during his extended exile from playing.
“He’s a very strong guy, he’s handled this situation so well,” Howe said. “He’s shown real strength, dignity and integrity. He’s been really strong because he’s been isolated at times. It hasn’t always been easy for him. He’s had some low moments and some lonely moments where the team has been playing.
“Sometimes with two away games we maybe haven’t been at the training ground on those days and he’s had to train on his own in isolation and keep his focus and spirits high and all those testing times for him.
“I think we’ll get a different player back, a stronger player mentally, someone who will enjoy his football and probably appreciate every moment because it has been taken away from him for a long period of time so hopefully we get the benefits of that.
“I don’t know if ‘debt’ is the right word but Sandro will naturally feel he wants to repay everyone at Newcastle.”
On match days during his ban Tonali was not allowed on the pitch, in the tunnel, the technical area or the dressing room.
In February he sat in the lower tier of a sold-out Darwen End, among 7,500 Newcastle fans, for the club’s FA Cup penalty shoot-out victory away to Blackburn Rovers. His song — “midfield maestro, from Milano, Sandro olé, olé, olé” — boomed out from the away end. It has ever since.
On Wednesday Tonali will hear it from the pitch.
There were tears when he was pushed by Howe to wave goodbye to supporters during a lap of thanks at St James’ Park after his last Premier League appearance before his ban, as a substitute against Crystal Palace in October.
His return in Nottingham, after ten months in the footballing wilderness, will be no less emotional.