Report: FA investigating whether Tonali broke betting rules after joining Newcastle
Sandro Tonali is the target of another gambling investigation.
The 23-year-old faces the possibility of further sanctions after the Football Association in England opened a fresh investigation into whether he bet on football in the months after his £55-million transfer from Milan to Newcastle, according to Jacob Whitehead of The Athletic.
Tonali is already serving a 10-month ban for betting on games involving his former teams, Brescia and AC Milan. He confessed to gambling on illegal platforms to Italian prosecutors in October and was banned from all football activity until next year.
Suspicions over further breaches arose after his agent revealed that Tonali has a gambling addiction.
Tonali is currently only allowed to train with his Newcastle teammates until the suspension ends.
Newcastle sporting director Dan Ashworth refused to rule out the possibility of initiating legal action against Milan. However, he wouldn't speculate about whether the Italian side knew about Tonali's problems before selling him in July.
He added that the club wouldn't have pursued Tonali had it been aware of the Italian football federation's investigation.
"It’s really difficult for me to get into what other clubs do or don’t know," he said, according to The Guardian's Louise Taylor. "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."
There have been "no conversations" between the two clubs since they met in the Champions League in September after Tonali's betting breaches were made public, Ashworth says.
Tonali played 12 times for Newcastle before the suspension came into effect on Oct. 27.
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