Sandro Tonali officially became a Tottenham Hotspur player on July 6, but Roberto De Zerbi had laid the groundwork for this transfer months before.
After reading that Newcastle United expected to lose his fellow Italian this summer, De Zerbi made immediate contact with a mutual friend to help grease the wheels in his pursuit of the eventual club-record £100million ($133.8m at the current rate)signing.
“The story is very simple,” De Zerbi told reporters in Sydney during Spurs’ ongoing pre-season tour of New Zealand and Australia. “I saw Sandro wanted to leave before the end of the season and we have one friend in common; the team manager of Brescia.
“I sent a message to my friend to say, ‘Hey, inform Sandro, if we stay up, I’ll go to him’. After 10 minutes, my friend answered me, ‘I said to Sandro, and he’s open’. I said, ‘Now we have to win one game to stay up!’
“I watched Newcastle’s game against West Ham, 90 minutes (indicates sweat coming down his face), and Sandro played very well in the first half. I said (to myself), ‘If I stay up, I come to you, I come to you, I come to you’.”
Tonali played his part as Newcastle beat Spurs’ fellow relegation candidates West Ham United 3-1 that day on the penultimate weekend of the Premier League season, a result which meant De Zerbi and company needed just a point from their final two matches, away to Chelsea and at home against Everton.
After a 2-1 midweek loss at Stamford Bridge, Spurs confirmed their top-flight status for 2026-27 with a 1-0 win on the final Sunday.
De Zerbi kept Spurs up by taking 11 points from his seven matches in charge (Richard Heathcote/Getty Images)
In his post-match press conference afterwards, De Zerbi said that the work of assembling a squad for this season would start the very next day, and proved true to his word. Tonali was one of the first people he contacted to set up a meeting in Brescia, the northern city where De Zerbi grew up and where the midfielder spent more than a decade as a player before joining Milan in 2020.
“When we won the last game with Everton, the day after the game, at 4pm, I sent a message to Sandro, ‘Sandro, I want to speak with you’,” De Zerbi revealed. “After 10 minutes, we spoke, and after two days, I came back to Italy, and we met in his home.”
For Tonali, the move to Tottenham after three years at Newcastle made sense on many levels — for a start, there was that natural connection with De Zerbi.
While De Zerbi spent only half a season playing for Brescia while on loan from Napoli, he was born and raised there and still visits in the summer. His father used to organise away days for Brescia’s ultras, during which he watched Tonali develop from academy kid into one of the most in-demand and exciting midfield prospects in the world.
Tonali spends time there in the off-season too, and can’t help but run into local legends, not just De Zerbi, but perhaps the most iconic Roberto in Italian football.
“Brescia is so small,” the 26-year-old told reporters in a roundtable interview in Sydney. “I spent two weeks there, and (De Zerbi) as well. I met him two or three times in the city, with the car. But not just him. I met my old team manager in Brescia. (and) I met Roberto Baggio twice.
“I spoke with him (De Zerbi) when he was (managing) in Sassuolo, and at Brighton and Marseille; we spoke every time, because we are Italian, we are from Brescia, and it’s a mini-connection together.”
For Tonali, who describes himself as a “normal person” who likes “normal people” and is happiest spending time with those closest to him, including his grandmother and nephew in his hometown, his family’s happiness and contentment were top of mind.
He had considered a move back to Italy, but Serie A clubs could not afford the level of transfer fee Newcastle wanted. After feeling De Zerbi’s desire to work together and hearing Tottenham’s pitch, it became evident that this would be the best option for him, despite serious rival interest from Manchester City.
Tonali spent three years in boyhood club Brescia’s first team before joining Milan (Marco Luzzani/Getty Images)
“I spoke with Tottenham,” he said. “When you speak with one team, the first impression is a big thing. My first impression was really positive. I spoke after two minutes with my wife and my family, and I said, ‘Probably it will be one of the best decisions of my career’. She told me, ‘You have 100 per cent control over this decision’. I wanted to speak with her because it’s our life.
“So my first impression was really positive. When you are happy after a 10-minute speech, it’s everything, everything is perfect. The gaffer was Italian, Roberto. I knew him. Roberto really cares about his work, his football. He said, ‘The project will be tough but will be perfect for me, for you, for the city, and we can do one of the best seasons, because we have big players. We just have to put a lot of work in’.”
The mini Italian revolution led by De Zerbi on the lilywhite side of north London certainly helped, as well.
Countryman goalkeeper Guglielmo Vicario is expected to leave Spurs in this window, but Tonali was accompanied on their long journey from London to Auckland by another compatriot in defender Destiny Udogie, who joked he was sitting next to “Mr £100m” on his Snapchat story. De Zerbi has Italians on his backroom team too in assistant Marcello Quinto, who he had as a player at Foggia in 2016, fitness coach Marco Marcattilio and new strength and conditioning coach Agostino Tibaudi.
Tonali grinned that he now hears as much Italian about the place as he does English.
“It’s nice,” he says. “So many staff, three Italian players… It’s funny because sometimes we speak more Italian than English. But it’s fine, because I was at Newcastle for three years and I spoke just English for three years! I only spoke Italian in my house with my wife. So it was a bit different.”
While at Newcastle, Tonali says he managed to head home twice a month, returning for two or three days when the players were given time off.
While the home comforts in north London provided by De Zerbi and his staff played a part in swaying him to Tottenham, Tonali has fond memories of Newcastle, a city that “lives for football”, and wanted to ensure he got the best deal for the club, who supported him through a 10-month ban in 2023 and 2024 for placing illegal bets on football matches.
“The first thing was to get the best deal for Newcastle. I met there some of the best people for football, for their work in the training ground,” said Tonali, speaking hours before it was revealed by The Athletic on Thursday morning that head coach Eddie Howe is to leave the club.
“When I decided to move, I told my agent and (sporting director) Ross Wilson that I wanted the best deal for Newcastle because they deserve everything, and if I have to move, then I can say hello to you or Eddie (Howe) in two or three years. If we meet in 10 years, I want to have a good dinner with the staff, with Ross, because they are very great people.”
Tonali insists he wanted the best deal for Newcastle once he’d decided it was time to leave (Stu Forster/Getty Images)
While Tonali’s fee meant he overtook fellow newcomer Mateus Fernandes as Tottenham’s record signing mere days after the 22-year-old Portugal international joined from relegated West Ham, hopes are high at the club that they can become an outstanding midfield partnership on an equal footing. The pair have already hit it off away from football, which should only help their understanding flourish.
“(De Zerbi) wants our relationship to be 100 per cent, especially on the pitch, because off the pitch, our relationship is already top,” Tonali says. “We have to keep our football, our work on the pitch, because it’s tough. We played in two different teams last season, two different shapes, two different football (styles). Now we are together, and we have to find our shape, our football.
“Sometimes it’s not easy. Maybe you need two or three weeks. But after four or five days, me and Mateus said, ‘It’s not really difficult, this football, because we know the rules about this shape’. We played in the past with two midfielders, and if you play with two midfielders, you already know everything. You know the offensive phase, the defensive phase, and it’s a little easier. You need less time.”
Tonali spent much of last season operating as a No 6 for Newcastle due to team-mates’ injuries, but has often played his best football as a dynamic No 8. While Fernandes is also capable in both roles, Tonali thinks his new running mate’s qualities should allow him to have more influence higher up the pitch.
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“I don’t know, we don’t decide already, but I think him,” he said, when asked who will be the sitting midfielder in their partnership. “For me, I played at No 6 last season, but for him, I think his characteristics are more No 6 than No 8.”
And if there’s any worry that Tonali now thinks he’s top dog at the club because of what Spurs are paying for him, he is very happy to allay those concerns. Then again, it’s no wonder that someone who is not interested in the glamour of being a superstar footballer could not care less about being one of the latest inductees into the Premier League’s £100million club.
“If I was another player, sometimes it’s tough, sometimes the pressure is different, but you have to understand that this is football,” he says. “The price is different now than 10 years ago. I know I have a lot of pressure, but I know I’m a football player, I know my responsibilities, I know this team, I know the people here. I have to play like I’m a normal player, a normal Tottenham player, with passion, putting my energy in every day.
“If you put this into the pitch every day, it’s different; it’s not £1million, £10m, or £100m. You just have to be a passionate player for this gaffer. Put everything onto the pitch.”
