Transfer analysis: Sandro Tonali arrives at Newcastle to fill a very specific role
Tonali was going through a hectic period at the turn of June and July. Not only was he struggling with the Italian side at the U21 European Championships, but he was also a part of one of the most surprising moves of the summer so far.
He moved from AC Milan to Newcastle, where he signed a contract until 2029, with a price tag of €64million. In the process, he became the most expensive Italian footballer in history.
Right from the start, it is important to dispel the misconceptions that have long swirled around his role on the pitch. Tonali is not a deep-lying playmaker, nor a lone defensive midfielder. Therefore, completely forget any of the fabricated comparisons to Andrea Pirlo.
While he is not a pure defensive midfielder - breaking down one opponent's attack after another - it also doesn't mean that he is bad at defending. His strengths, rather, come out mostly in the press.
At Milan, he filled the role of a player who was the first to trigger the press, applying his physical strength and his ability to win the ball back off opponents.
These are the reasons why Newcastle boss Eddie Howe wanted him so much. The role of the 'number six' will very likely continue to be filled by Bruno Guimaraes, whereas Tonali will be tasked with aggressively winning the ball higher up the pitch in a 'number eight' role much like Joelinton, Joe Willock and Sean Longstaff attempted to do under Howe last season.
At the same time, the respected English coach likes his eights to rotate with the wingers or drop deeper from time to time, allowing Guimaraes to operate in the spaces created. Tonali should have no problem with that either.
The data shows that he is very adept at winning the ball through the middle of the pitch and often gets it into dangerous spaces with his runs. In the attacking third, his final pass particularly stands out.
According to the metric of expected assists, he was in the top 10% of players in his position in Serie A and the same goes for the number of chances created per game. His most dangerous opportunities are created by diagonal passes from the midfield, crosses from deep or through-balls into the final third.
But the question remains - how quickly can he adapt to the new league? His performances in the Champions League should be a good indicator. He played a hefty 1,122 minutes in its last edition and performed as well as, or in some cases even better, than in Serie A in all of the above metrics.
Although the difficulty of Italian players' adaptation to English football is regularly mentioned among football experts, this time it seems like an over-generalization.
Tonali's price tag guarantees that Newcastle will pay close attention to his quick integration into the line-up plus he's arriving into a well-oiled machine led by a respected coach who seems to have very specific plans for him.
