Sandro Tonali was forced off the field early during Newcastle United’s nightmare evening in Barcelona last week.
The Italian international withdrew from the game in the second half of the 7-2 drubbing at Barcelona with a hip injury.
Sandro Tonali underwent an MRI scan the following day, with the results of that scan suggesting the injury wasn’t too bad and that he could even be involved in the Tyne-Wear derby on the Sunday.
Sunday came around, and Tonali strolled into St James’ Park in his casual gear, which told us all we needed to know. He would not be involved. The 25-year-old fffsat out the derby defeat, but still travelled the following day to link up with his Italian teammates ahead of Italy’s World Cup play-offs.
Italy take on Northern Ireland tomorrow night in the semi-final, and if they overcome that obstacle, they will play the winner of Wales and Bosnia and Herzegovina in the final for a place in this summer’s tournament.
Ahead of such a crucial game, Italy are hoping to have all of their players fully fit and ready for the challenge, and it looks as though they may get their wish as far as Tonali is concerned.
According to La Gazzetta dello Sport, Tonali has ‘overcome’ the issue that ruled him out of Sunday’s game and has trained with ‘good intensity’ this week.
While that’s great news for Italy in terms of tomorrow’s game, it is a bit of a worry for Newcastle fans.
Obviously, it’s great that he’s recovering well, but we can’t help but be a bit apprehensive that Italy are just rushing him back so he’s available for tomorrow’s game.
We’ll be watching closely to see how many minutes our midfield maestro plays and how comfortable he looks. The last thing we need is him aggravating his issue and it resulting in a lengthy layoff.
Newcastle have seven games to save their season and not having Sandro Tonali for those games would be a massive blow, especially if it’s the result of something that could have been avoided.