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Sandro Tonali could be back in Newcastle team before August after expressing 'guilt'
EARLIER this season, when Eddie Howe was scrambling for pretty much anyone to put into his first team, such was the extent of Newcastle United’s injury issues, the head coach found himself scribbling down potential line-ups in his office at the club’s Darsley Park training ground.
If a player had overperformed in training, they were promoted into the team. On more than occasion, however, Howe found himself putting a line through a name almost as soon as he had written it. The player in question? Sandro Tonali. How Newcastle could have done with their £55m summer signing, whose impressive training performances ultimately meant nothing given his ten-month ban for breaching betting regulations.
“Getting Sandro back will be a huge thing for us,” said Howe, who admits to being relieved that the suspended sanction imposed by the Football Association yesterday means Tonali will still be able to return to competitive action at the end of August.
“We’ve had him in our training numbers all year and there are times when you’re looking at what you can do with the team and where you can take the team, and you accidentally put him in the team and then you go, ‘Oh no I can’t!’.
“It’s been a huge frustration to have a top-quality player that you can’t use. I know what he can do and the difference he’ll have made this year, but it wasn’t to be.”
Instead, while Newcastle were forced to soldier on without their star midfield signing, Tonali found himself wrestling with the mental challenge of being a footballer who is unable to play football.
The 23-year-old will have experienced various emotions since confessing to a gambling addiction last autumn – fear, anger, embarrassment, hurt – but Howe claims a sense of guilt has always been apparent.
Tonali took a voluntary pay cut after his worldwide ban was confirmed, and while Howe remains reluctant to disclose too many details about the private conversations he and his coaching staff have had with the Italian in the last ten months, he is clearly convinced of both the player’s remorse and the quality of Tonali’s character despite his self-confessed mistakes.
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“It (the pay cut) was something he wanted to do,” said Howe. “He felt the guilt, and he felt that joining a new club, that was something he wanted to do to show the club in good faith that he was sorry and he was determined to put it behind him and try to learn from it.
“So, it’s all really good signs, I think, for the future for us that we've got a very good human being in the football club and someone that's now keen to put it behind him and try to show all the good that he can do for Newcastle United.”
It remains to be seen when Tonali next enters a football pitch, with neither Howe nor club officials willing to confirm yesterday whether or not the midfielder would be part of the squad that will travel to Australia later this month for two post-season friendlies. Currently, it remains unclear whether FIFA’s global ban extends to the exhibition games Newcastle intend to play against Tottenham and an A-League All Stars team.
Similarly, it is unclear if, or how much, Tonali will be involved in Newcastle’s pre-season programme – whether in front of crowds or behind-closed-doors – but what is beyond doubt is that he will be available to return to competitive action from August 27 onwards.
He will miss the Magpies’ first two league matches, but should be able to feature before the first international break next season at the start of September.
There were glimpses of what he could be capable of prior to his suspension, most notably on the opening day of the season, when he was the Man of the Match in Newcastle’s dismantling of Aston Villa, and his return should significantly enhance Howe’s options at the heart of midfield.
“We’ve missed his technical ability, and his ability to play different positions in a season where you’re stretched by injuries,” said Howe. “Any player that is versatile is hugely important.
“He would have been a big, big player for us. He would have driven us to get some key results. The players have felt his loss as well. That has been a negative for the players to see him train and then not be able to train.
“I think for us, and for him, we just have to hope that some good comes of this situation. The hope is that he's been able to learn and develop to the English style and, ultimately, this could be something that he looks back on in a few years’ time and goes, ‘Actually, you know what, that helped me settle into England’.”
