Athletic: Newcastle offer €50m in bid to beat Chelsea to Milan favourite

Newcastle United are serious about trying to sign Sandro Tonali and have made a substantial bid to try and convince AC Milan, a report claims.

The Athletic report that Newcastle have put forward an offer ‘in the region of’ €50m for Tonali, with the Magpies keen to strengthen their midfield after securing Champions League football for next season.

Tonali is also attracting interest from Chelsea as per the report but it is Newcastle who have made the first big offer, with their intention being to sign a creative midfielder and a more defensively-minded one.

Tonali is heading out to captain Italy at this month’s U21 European Championships and he made 48 appearances for the Rossoneri – who are his boyhood club – across all competitions last season.

Given the 23-year-old’s attachment to the shirt it feels like a difficult coup for Newcastle to pull off even with their vast riches, especially given that Milan can also offer Champions League football for next season and are in the position of not needing to sell, unlike rivals Inter for example.

Tags AC Milan Sandro Tonali

30 Comments

  1. Not sure how many years left on his contract but he must be worth 80-90m for Milan due to his importance to the team, that he’s one of a few Italians and that there’s no obvious replacement for his skills in the squad.

  2. If inter can turn that down for Barella (and they’re in a difficult financial position) then surely we can do the same for Tonali.

  3. yeah. 50M for getting a key player who also happens to be a boyhood fan of the club? I don’t think that’s gonna make it.

  4. Sportitalia is reporting that his agent is already en route to London for detailed talks. Really hope those are fake news.

  5. 50-60 mil woudnt be enough in my view as the players valuation is in the vicinity of that sum to begin with but in this case even if cardinale would be willing to sell him i doubt tonali would accept to move on as his will is clear and that is to stay for the long run and i doubt more money would sway that view,

    1. I don’t think He will stay because right now club doesn’t value the players who are passionate about the club..they just wanna make money..The way it is run and how they treat Maldini..maybe their might be chances of calling it a day at Milan and move on..

          1. yes, like last week Milan sold Mike.. O wait, they didnt sell him.
            I just read that Milan rejected 50M€ and asked for 80M€. NU watns to get some “cheap” players from italy and its not happening. Barella/inter snubed them, Milan wont?
            get real

      1. dont get me wrong im completely against maldinis sacking and my anger will last for a long time but as tonali has beem an ac milan fan since childhood and easily already could have gotten a better contract elsewhere but chose to join us while making scrices he is actually one of the players intentions i wouldnt question as he clearly loves the club.
        Cardinale would quickly realize this is not an american drafting system where players has to join the clubs that comes calling. Either way ill wait and see how this transfer window actually pans out because there is always the chance that we can improve the squad even though this summer started out reallly badly.

  6. Sell Tonali, Theo, Mike, Leao…sell everyone that makes Milan… Then we have Pioli, Cardinale, Moncada, Mr. Billy, and Furlani playing next season for Milan So that we can win the Champions League… They fired Maldini For this… They wanna sell and they wanna make money and they don’t wanna invest

    1. Yeah, Pioli was secretly given a percentage of the shares of the club. He’s in on the plot to gut the squad and pocket the cash. /s

      Pioli is many things, but he’s not an idiot. He would be committing professional suicide if he thought the club not going to provide him with a competitive squad and yet stayed after having won a league title and reaching the CL semis. So in a way he’s the canary for this project. He hasn’t quit or accepted an offer from another club, so he must know and approve of the club’s plans.

      1. Pioli has always towed the company motto ie frugal spending. I doubt he’d be asking for signings to become competitive as you say. After all Maldini did exactly that and got fired for it. We’re more likely at this point to have basically the same set of players going into next season. Matter of fact we may have less if indeed they want to reduce the squad size

  7. Well, based on the stats, that danish dude from Lecce is probably in the same ballpark as Tonali. If that’s all they care about, it makes sense to them to sell one for 50 mill and buy another for 20.
    Sad, but this is our reality now. There’s no longer room for things like love for the club, loyalty, identity.

    1. Prices in football are based on players reputation, his wage, the years left on his contract etc. I watched Moneyball a few days ago and they made the very logical argument about players being overvalued based on factors like the above, and that getting players that perform the same job but cost less is the smarter option. Hard to argue with that, but is that really the essence of football?

  8. From a technical point of view, if NU offers 70-80mills I with overwhelming confident believe Milan can easily replace him with someone better plus reinforce other parts of our departments, with that amount of money getting quality midfield, right wing and a striker all at the same time is no longer a dream BUT if you see it from other perspective such as the love the player has for Milan, always putting in 200% every match cause the love he has for the club then we will never be able to replace him from that perspective, There is no player on this planet who has even a quarter of Tonali’s technical abilities, combined with the same level of devotion he has for the club. It will take forever for us to find a player that is as good as Tonali and with the same amount of devotion he has.

  9. Tonali is a classic example of a player who really is very average but his importance to the team is far more than his ability because of what he represents.

    In fact his lack of ability has actually cost us games but his commitment and what he represents where central to our title run in including when he popped up scoring goals which have since disappeared from his game.

    He’s the exact sort of player that clubs need to win titles.

    Like Ambrosini, Henderson, Carrick, Bonucci and a string of other pretty average players who were essential to successful sides.

    This is why the obsession with “world class” or “Milan quality” is so misguided.

    There’s better midfielders than Tonali out there but that doesn’t matter because they don’t have his “vibe”. So for that reason he’s irreplaceable.

    1. Indeed. He’s not the best player in the world and never will be but his value is more in the attitude department and replacing him would require two quality midfielders and 50M€ isn’t enough for that.

      1. Is this commitment and passion for the club irreplaceable? Is he the first and last Milan “fan” to play for the club? There are and will be others. In fact some of the players we’ve been linked with are self-professed “Milan fans”. Personally, I would not sell him this summer for the simple reason that there is already A LOT of turmoil going on, with 3-4 upgrades needed, including another CM, but if they offer 60-70m it would be hard to turn down and that money could be used to buy two CMs, thus replacing Tonali and covering Bennacer. Again, not pushing for the sale, but at some point the money will be too good to refuse.

        1. “Is this commitment and passion for the club irreplaceable?”

          Nope. And I never said such thing. I said 50M€ isn’t enough.

        2. This is pure speculation of course but we could replace Tonali with the Napoli midfield and it wouldn’t work.

          Napoli didn’t have better players than Milan in much the same way Milan didn’t have better players than the other teams the season before.

          It’s not about having better players or else Milan would’ve finished 2nd having beaten Cremonese, Empoli and Salernitana.

          It’s about capturing that magic. That magic might only exist for one season or could exist in moments over a career. Very rarely is it at the sustained levels we’ve seen with Messi and Ronaldo – and in the case of the former he struggled to recreate that magic away from Barcelona with Argentina or PSG (and finally came good for former whilst he struggled at the latter).

          There’s no magic formula to create that magic. But Tonali has something about him and that’s why he needs to stay at the club for the next 20 years.

          Such a thing is probably unthinkable nowadays but if we can keep him he can help give the club identity.

  10. This is the one player in milan that should be untouchable. This type of player is one in a million these days because he would stay with milan for his whole career and money wouldn’t have an effect on him. If they ever accept a bid for him I know cardinales real intentions

  11. If we, the fans, don’t get out on the streets and PUSH THESE PEOPLE AWAY, TO NEVER COME BACK TO. MILANELO, they’ll destroy our club in less than 2 years! Glazes in Man-U will look like saints, compared with this Eliot-Cardinale MAFIA GROUP!
    #RedBirdout
    #Cardinaleout

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