Tonali reflects honestly on first two seasons at Milan: “I didn’t want to leave” | OneFootball

Sandro Tonali has reflected on the time that he spent with AC Milan, admitting that in his first season at the club he sometimes preferred not to play.

The exit of Tonali to Newcastle United is still very painful for many Milan fans as they saw a boyhood fan of the club depart, albeit for a huge amount of money. His adventure in England didn’t start in an ideal way with his suspension due to betting activity.

Nonetheless, he returned at the end of August and was part of a team that won Newcastle’s first trophy in decades: the Carabao Cup. There continues to be speculation about a potential return to Milan though, which is likely to continue.

Tonali gave an interview to Cronache di Spogliatoio and a full version will be released in the next few hours. The midfielder spoke a lot about the Rossoneri, with MilanNews relaying the words from the preview released.

On the ban…

“I know I made a mistake, I know I paid, I know I worked to be a better man. But at the beginning, in the first 5-6 months, when I hadn’t yet understood my mistake, my head was telling me: ‘Sandro, you didn’t make a mistake’. That was the danger.

“If you don’t follow the same path as me, if you don’t lose anything, it’s difficult for you to understand the mistake. If tomorrow you lost your job and your family, you would immediately understand that you had done something wrong.

“An examination of conscience would automatically be triggered inside you. In my situation it was a little different: no one took my salary away from me, they just blocked my job. How can you say: ‘Yes, for a year I’ll go to the psychologist 4 times a week even if it’s not mandatory instead of staying at home’?”

On returning to the pitch…

“When I came back I played the first 3-4 games with desire, energy, adrenaline. I reached a huge peak, then from the following matches I felt the sprint. At a certain point they always expected that type of performance and when I dropped off, in England they asked themselves: ‘Oh, what happened?’.

“In reality it’s a normal thing. We found a path, we managed ourselves. Between August and November I played 2-3 games as a starter, but I still had a lot of minutes because I came on for 45 minutes or half an hour. Never just for one minute, because it wouldn’t have been of any use to me.”

On being away from Italy…

“I was lucky to be in England. I lived 7 months without a phone, without a tablet. I only watched TV for matches and films. I didn’t watch the news, I didn’t get any news. Also because I imagine that in that period there wasn’t… ‘Sandro Tonali made a mistake’.

“Not watching social media and TV completely lightened my mind. I have no idea what happened in those months and I don’t care, that’s the beauty of it. I know I made a mistake, I know I paid and worked to be a better man, but I wasn’t interested in updating social media by looking for my name.

“Living without a phone was a bit of a problem, especially in contacting my family. Every time they had to contact my girlfriend and she had to be next to me. Then I went around, to the pitch in the car without a phone and it didn’t bother me.

“I had the training times on my girlfriend’s phone. After a few months, when I understood that using it alone was no longer a danger, I took it up again.”

On Juve’s interest before coming to Milan…

“I was in Sardinia, Cistana, Torregrossa and the Brescia group in short. At a restaurant we met De Ligt. It was the year we played against each other in Serie A, the year of Covid. He spoke highly of Juventus, as a player he advised me to think about it.

“Those were the days when I was negotiating with Milan. We stopped to talk after a game. It happens that for a handful of seconds you find yourself chatting with an opponent even if you don’t know him, more out of respect.

“Then you memorise some of them and when you see them, you think: ‘I’ve already seen this’. It was the summer when I ended up in the newspapers, because it was difficult for me to return to Serie B with Brescia.

“Milan, Inter and Juve were at stake for the whole summer. And so everyone told me: ‘Come to Inter, come to Milan, come to Juve’.”

Photo by George Wood/Getty Images

On arriving at Milan…

“If we have to be very honest, when Milan bought me, I was coming from the last year at Brescia where I had a contract worth €200,000. I spent a summer where I never knew who I would sign with, until the last five days I really didn’t know which team I would go to.”

On the difficulties of adapting…

“And in the end I found myself at Milan, which is the team I always supported as a child, with a contract worth around two and a half million euros. I said: ‘Okay, I’ve done it, I’ve arrived, that’s it. What do I have to do? What more than that, what is there?’.

“Then for me, who didn’t come from a city, I didn’t come from a rich family, I said to myself: ‘Okay, that’s it, now I’m having fun, I don’t think about anything anymore’.

“And so I was a twenty-year-old boy who was in Milan with his girlfriend, who earned a lot of money, played for his favourite team, I no longer had any goals in my life. And I had difficulties because these reasonings and thoughts that I had off the pitch were then reflected on the pitch.”

On the difficulties on the field in his first season…

“But people didn’t expect the same things as in Brescia. I started normally in the first few games, nothing special. Then I had the period in between, which was the most difficult because of the many games, which I wasn’t used to.

“We played once a week at Brescia, and I found myself playing the preliminaries of the Europa League, Europa League, Coppa Italia, Serie A. I was exhausted, so I suffered a lot.

“Sometimes, in that season, I preferred not to play, so this makes you understand what moment I was in. If I don’t play a game today, my girlfriend knows, it’s crazy!”

On what changed between the first and second season at Milan…

“At the end of the season we qualified for the Champions League and I said: ‘Enough, now I have to play’, because I had played 37 games, but never one that made you say ‘F*ck, what a game Tonali played!’.

“From the second year everything changed a bit. I went on holiday, I had a rather particular holiday because we still didn’t know if Milan would buy me or not. I stayed in Brescia, on the lake, spending every day looking at my phone for 20 days, there was that heavy atmosphere.”

On his second year at Milan…

“I didn’t want to leave Milan. And that weighed heavily on me. They called us and said: ‘Okay, but you have to give up [some money], you have to talk’.

“I think I got over the difficult moment in the first two games of the second season, which were a bit of a do or die. Like: either you’ve changed or we’ll relegate you to what you were before.”