Agents representing Sandro Tonali release official statement – Following new FA charges | OneFootball

A new development on the Sandro Tonali situation.

This follows on from Thursday’s announcement by the English FA, regarding alleged breaches by Sandro Tonali of their Betting Rules early this season.

The FA charge saying these alleged 50 bets / breaches had happened up to 12 October 2023, before the Italian FA investigation came to light.

The FA official statement on Sandro Tonali – 28 March 2024:

‘Sandro Tonali has been charged with misconduct in relation to alleged breaches of The FA’s Betting Rules.

It’s alleged that the Newcastle United midfielder breached FA Rule E8 50 times by placing bets on football matches between 12 August 2023 and 12 October 2023.

Sandro Tonali has until 5 April 2024 to respond.’

These English FA charges are of course separate to those made by the FIGC (Italian Football Federation) in October 2023, which resulted in a ten months worldwide ban.

Tonali’s agents GR Sports, now giving some clarity on the English FA charges.

The agency have released a statement, providing an update on these new English FA charges.

The Sandro Tonali representatives revealing and making clear, that these new charges aren’t due to the English FA unearthing anything new.

Instead, the Newcastle United midfielder self-reported this football gambling activity over five months ago to the FA, at the same time he opened up to the Italian Football Federation and detailed exactly what he had done.

So this once again begs the question, if the English FA were made aware of the facts back in October 2023 by Sandro Tonali, why have they waited over five months before bringing these extra charges?

It looks a total shambles and as though they have deliberately done this, waited a ridiculous amount of time so that they can now make headlines and get attention.

This happening despite the reality that really this was just one big ongoing situation, where Sandro Tonali had continued doing in the UK what he’d been doing in Italy, before things came to light in October 2023. Which is when surely the English FA should just have acted in cohesion with their Italian counterparts and put out their own statement, or one in conjunction with the Italian Football Federation, making a clean end to the matter and the ten months punishment covering all of Tonali’s football betting rule breaking.

So basically, Sandro Tonali gave the Italian authorities all the information they needed and within weeks they had concluded their investigation and announced the player’s punishment. Whilst Tonali does the same with the English authorities and yet wait over five months to even put the charges to the player, yet the midfielder gave them all the evidence they needed back then (October 2023).

GR Sports official statement on Sandro Tonali situation – 29 March 2024:

“It should be noted, in relation to the reports in the English and Italian press, that the ongoing investigation is a due act after Newcastle player Sandro Tonali, decided in October 2023 to self-report to the FA, as he had previously done with the FIGC, in order to clarify his position regarding the betting he had carried out at a time prior to the start of the proceedings in Italy.

“We are therefore not talking about anything new but simply about recurring facts before the Italian disqualification, which the player voluntarily wanted to bring to light even to the English Federation to put a definitive end to a negative and very painful parenthesis of his life”.

“Sandro Tonali will continue to fully cooperate with the FA as he did with the FIGC and do everything possible to ensure that these proceedings can be resolved as quickly as possible”.