2023-10-26 14:18:22
By Le Figaro with AFP
Published 1 hour ago, Updated now
Sandro Tonali LEE SMITH / REUTERS
The Italian Football Federation (FIGC) has imposed a firm ten-month suspension on Sandro Tonali due to multiple sports bets in recent seasons.
Newcastle’s Italian international Sandro Tonali received a ten-month suspension for betting on football matches, including those of AC Milan, his club from 2020 to 2023, on illegal platforms, the association announced on Thursday. Italian Football Federation (FIGC). Tonali, who last summer became the most expensive Italian player in history by joining Newcastle for 64 million euros, is the second player sanctioned in the sports betting affair, after the midfielder Juventus Nicolo Fagioli suspended for seven months.
After Nicolo Fagioli, another great hope in Italian football sees his career compromised by the illicit sports betting affair: Sandro Tonali has received a ten-month suspension, the Italian Football Federation (FIGC) announced on Thursday. “The sanction imposed on Tonali is 18 months: ten months of suspension and eight months of probation», Explained the FIGC to AFP. Having become the most expensive Italian player in history by joining Newcastle for 64 million euros, Tonali, 23, was suspended longer than Fagioli, a Juventus midfielder who was sanctioned for seven months without competition on October 17 . Aggravating circumstances, the Italian international has indeed bet on matches of Brescia (2017-20) and AC Milan (2020-23) when he wore the jersey of these two teams, always betting on victories of its clubs.
Read alsoFootball: the investigation into sports betting shakes Italy, the young Fagioli is said to have bet more than a million euros
Tonali, selected 15 times for the Italian team, will not play again before the 2024-25 season and will miss Euro-2024 for which the Nazionale, reigning European champions, must still qualify. As with Fagioli, the FIGC took into account his cooperation with the sports justice investigation. The sanction is accompanied by obligations of care to put an end to his addiction to gambling and participation “at least sixteen meetings» where he will have to warn young licensees and hopefuls of the dangers of sports betting, the FIGC told AFP. For an infringement of article 24 of the FIGC sports justice code which prohibits a professional player from betting on football, Tonali was liable to a three-year suspension.
But since the start of this affair born from police investigations into these illegal betting platforms and revealed by Fabrizio Corona, a sulphurous “ex-king of the paparazzi“, the Italian Federation wants, to use the words of its president Gabriele Gravina, “to accompany“the players involved he promised”to never give up». «I have the duty, as a father and as a grandfather, to defend the dignity of many young Italians“, he explained recently. The affair in a country still marked by various scandals where players and managers bet on matches in which they were involved and could thus influence the results – which is not the case in this one -, throws a harsh light on the daily lives of young football stars. Fagioli thus admitted that he had started playing “to drown his boredom».
His gambling debts exceeded three million euros, which exposed him to threats of physical violence from betting organizers, eager to get their money back. Until this affair, Tonali’s career was exemplary; debut in the Brescia first team at 17 in the Italian 2nd division, a first selection for the Italian team at 19, a transfer in 2020 to the prestigious Milan attracted by the elegance and vision of the game of the one who is quickly nicknamed the new Andrea Pirlo, before hitting the jackpot by joining Newcastle who offered him an annual salary of 7 million euros.
This was before the affair which will change, or at least taint the career of the “Golden Boy» of Italian football. And it’s not over: another international, Nicolo Zaniolo (Aston Villa), was questioned by the police during the last gathering of the Italian team. If, like Fagioli and Tonali, he has little to fear from the justice system, which is mainly interested in the managers of these betting platforms, he too should receive a long suspension.
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