Newcastle set off their own investigation on Tonali

Newcastle’s biggest summer signing Sandro Tonali was banned for almost a year on betting on matches and it obviously caught his new club by a surprise. Now the Premier League club is conducting an internal investigation on the Italian midfielder’s transfer, said sporting director Dan Ashworth.

The 23-year-old Italy international was sanctioned with an 18-month ban last month by the Italian Football Federation, eight months of which will be commuted to alternative treatment after an agreement was reached with the Federal Prosecutor’s Office.Soccer’s governing body, FIFA, said it granted a request by the Italian federation to apply the ban worldwide.

Tonali joined Newcastle from AC Milan in July for a reported fee of 70 million euros ($75 million), a record sum for an Italian player, but he will miss the rest of the season and will not be part of Italy’s squad for Euro 2024 if the team qualifies.

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“It was a massive shock, a massive surprise. Dealing with it was new to all of us,” Ashworth told British media. “First and foremost, Sandro is a human being. Everyone in this room has done things we shouldn’t have done or things we regret. He was a big signing for us. We didn’t expect it. You look at yourself. Could I have done better? Could we have known? Should we have known? You look at your processes. I have been doing this for 16 years and it has never happened before.”

“It’s really difficult for me to get into what other clubs do or don’t know. All we can do is look at our own internal investigation and internal process. It’s a really difficult question for me to answer, I just don’t know.”