**It recently came to light that Sandro Tonali has already extended his stay on Tyneside amid talks of a potential bumper deal coming down the line for him at Newcastle United.**
Sandro Tonali was handed a 10-month ban from all football after being found guilty of breaching betting rules during his time in Italy, and later, he was found guilty of the same early on at Newcastle. The English FA opted to allow Tonali to serve his UK ban concurrently with the one imposed by the Italians, meaning the 10-month ban was not extended.
During that 10-month spell, Newcastle, who were only 12 games into the season when the ban was handed down, opted to support Tonali and continued paying a portion of his wages despite the fact that the club could have interpreted what he'd done as a breach of contract.
Recent reports have uncovered that during his ban, Newcastle and Tonali agreed on new terms which saw his original contract extended from 2028 to 2029 with an option to extend by a further year. This was uncovered as rumours started to grow about tying the Italian down to a bumper deal at Newcastle to reflect his importance to the club.
All is very much forgiven
Sandro Tonali signing a contract extension when he was banned was the least he could do
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For us, it makes sense that Newcastle would demand an extension to Tonali's terms, given he was going to miss an entire season's worth of football for the club that just forked out a lot of money for him.
Football finance expert Stefan Borson has now told [Football Insider](https://www.footballinsider247.com/stefan-borson-this-is-why-newcastle-may-have-agreed-secret-sandro-tonali-deal/) why he thinks the deal was kept quiet for so long.
> “It is hard to know exactly what went on there. I guess you’d keep it secret possibly because it looks like you’re rewarding a player who’s been suspended for a year.“I mean, it’s not a great look. The player was just bought for a lot of money. I wonder whether it had certain options in it, i.e. he had to come back to a certain level before he could get the extra year.“I doubt that they would have just unilaterally said ‘Here, have another year’ at some very significant contract because nobody knew whether the player after a year out for something so serious would be able to regain his form.
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> “He obviously has done and, therefore, you would want that contract in place, but you don’t know that that’s going to happen when you have a conversation with the player when he’s in a one-year suspension.”
Stefan Borson says there were likely many reasons the club didn't announce the contract
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Borson continued and doubled down on the idea that it may have been seen as bad optics had they announced a contract extension while he was banned.
> “So, why would they keep it secret?“I think there’s the optics of it means that you don’t want to be seen to be rewarding a very serious matter. We know that the way football is dealt with in these situations is to be very understanding and that’s great, but I don’t think you want to see it as a reward, so you’d keep it quiet, you’d see how he recovers.“I suspect it was an option as I say that Newcastle had to exercise, with their ability to choose when to exercise it.“Probably the trade-off was that they continued to pay him during his suspension without penalty maybe, or some kind of proportion of it, some kind of deal around that because obviously Tonali was in breach of his contract by I assume not disclosing the fact that he had breached those rules in the period before signing the contract.
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> “Those are the sorts of considerations that go on with these sort of tricky suspensions and potentially very expensive situations if the player doesn’t come back to form.”
Newcastle United played a blinder with Tonali
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We agree with Borson's point that it may have been seen as odd had Newcastle come out and said, "We're delighted that the player who embarrassed the club and is serving a 10-month ban from all forms of professional football has signed up to take more money out of the football club".
Especially given that, at the time, we still weren't sure what kind of player Tonali would be. We'd seen glimpses of his talent for sure, but the jury was still very much out on the Italian.
It actually took him some time after his return to integrate properly into the team, and there were those who still questioned his signing. So we think Newcastle did the right thing in making Tonali commit to more time at the club and by keeping it quiet to avoid judgment.
The club has played a blinder all around, considering everything that happened and now we have one of the best midfielders in the Premier League and we should do everything we can to keep him.