Sandro Tonali

[the wes 7,212]

Pick it out son 

[Vesper 30,224]

Serie A’s rising stars: 

He looks like Pirlo but Tonali’s genius is different

https://theathletic.com/1789236/2020/05/03/serie-as-rising-stars-tonali-sandro-brescia-pirlo-psg/

No player challenges our biases more in Italy than Sandro Tonali. “The hair’s to blame,” he would observe. It’s long, often needs a toss of the head to flick it out of his eyesight, and plays a major role in the preconceived ideas forming around him. If the picture isn’t clear enough already, trust me, it will be in a moment. He’s a Lombard, a kid of few words who plays at the base of midfield in the swallow-necked blue and white of Brescia. He probably owns a vineyard and makes his own wine. Hang on a minute? Is he the… No. No he isn’t. Proclaiming Tonali the new Andrea Pirlo is too easy, a little too convenient, even.

It speaks to a couple of things. Let’s start with projection. Fans hope to see another Pirlo. Who wouldn’t? Scouts want to say he is the second coming. It’s an easy sell to their sporting director. You also probably need to start thinking about what bringing through a player dubbed the new Pirlo means to a club in Brescia’s circumstances. Teams in Italy are increasingly dependent on TV money and player trading for the revenue they need to stay afloat.

And here’s the thing: Tonali feels his game shares more in common with Pirlo’s old team-mate Rino Gattuso. “I’ll give you that,” he told La Gazzetta dello Sport. “He’s someone I’ve always admired. Gattuso was my idol as a kid.” But the next Gattuso, with all due respect, isn’t going to whip up the same amount of hype, sell as many shirts or fetch as much money as the next Pirlo when the transfer window reopens.

All of which hasn’t stopped Italy’s top clubs from elbowing each other out of the way to sign him. Paris Saint-Germain and Manchester City have also kept abreast of the situation and want to be in the frame when he makes a decision about his future. “It’s not hard to see he’s got talent,” Juventus’ Chief Football Officer Fabio Paratici told Sky Italia. Well, maybe it was harder when Tonali was eight.

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Twice he trialled with AC Milan. Twice he didn’t make the cut. “Unfortunately, they didn’t think he was ready,” Davide Gatti, the head of the Lombardia Uno soccer school tells The Athletic. “When I say unfortunately I mean it’s unfortunate for them because buying Sandro now will cost them an awful lot of money. But lots of people have made the same mistake with other players. It’s not easy to judge a player and know exactly how they’ll develop at that age.”

Lombardia Uno has been affiliated with Milan for more than 20 years. It’s in the Barona neighbourhood, two stops from the end of the city’s green metro line in the direction of Assago. “Maldini’s boys played with us,” Gatti explains. “The youngest one, Daniel; he trains with Milan’s first team (and made his debut in February). A lot of players come through here. On average, I’d say 10 each year go on to sign for professional clubs; Inter, Milan, Torino, a few teams in the second division. Not all of them make it to Serie A like Sandro, though.”

Here on the banks of the Naviglio, Gatti’s teams play seven-a-side. Tonali occupied a role in front of the defence even then. “He was setting up goals for everyone right, left and centre,” Gatti recalls. “Sandro played two-touch football. Who does that at seven years old!?” Playing quickly did not mean Tonali was already polished, though. At least not to Gatti’s recollection. “Technically, he did not excel,” he says. “His technique was good — don’t get me wrong — but the tactical side of his game and physicality were his main strengths.”

A cut above the rest, Tonali’s coaches at Lombardia Uno were sometimes left with the impression he held himself back so as not to embarrass his team-mates. “He knew how good he was and almost played with the handbrake on,” Gatti claims. It must have been a blow for him when Milan decided against signing him. Tonali’s family are Interisti but when he was at Lombardia Uno, he trained in their rival’s colours. It was the time when Milan got their revenge over Liverpool in Athens and vanquished Boca Juniors in Yokohama to be crowned world champions in 2007. A banner held aloft by Massimo Ambrosini during Milan’s open top bus parade summed it up. “You can stick the Scudetto up your arse,” he told Inter.

As with a lot of things though, rejection didn’t faze Tonali. When La Gazzetta asked him if he was disappointed not to join Milan, Tonali was matter of fact in his response. “No,” he said, “I got to go to Piacenza.”

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Marginally closer to home in Lodi, Tonali attended an academy that, over the years, has given Serie A the Inzaghi brothers and Alessandro Lucarelli. He was on Piacenza’s books until the age of 12 when the club went bust and no longer had the resources to fund a youth sector. Tonali’s coach Gianluca Balestri flagged him up to Brescia and he has been there ever since.

“Besides his obvious natural ability, I think Brescia deserve great credit for the manner with which they’ve developed Sandro,” Federico Guidi explains. He can still remember the day he first laid eyes on Tonali. It was the winter of 2016 and the Italian Football Federation (FIGC) had selected a pool of players born in the year 2000 for a training camp. The players meeting up in Coverciano, on the leafy outskirts of Florence, had either never been part of the international set-up before or had only played one or two games for the Azzurrini.

The purpose of the exercise was simple enough. The FIGC are thorough at the best of times but they didn’t want to miss a thing, particularly any prospects flying under the radar outside the big clubs. Tonali, for instance, did not represent Italy until Guidi, the under-19 coach at the time, got to see him over the course of this three-day try-out. “I was impressed by his tactical intelligence,” Guidi says. “His reading of certain situations was quicker than the other players in his age group. He also had great stamina and natural fitness. He was a complete player. It was unusual to see that in a player his age.”

The FIGC started taking a closer interest and not too long afterwards, Tonali, as Guidi recalls it, “burst” on the scene at Brescia. He made his first-team debut in a second division game against Avellino in August 2017. “It was a bit of a disaster,” Tonali recalled. “I came on with 20 minutes left. We were a goal up but a man down after Emanuele Ndoj got sent off. We lost 2-1.” It wasn’t long though before word got around that some Pirlo lookalike was pulling the strings at the Rigamonti. “Sandro’s mainly right-footed,” Guidi says. “But even in those days, he’d use his left and get the team up the pitch with great fluidity. He moved the ball very quickly and alternated playing short with playing long when the circumstances dictated.” 

I know what you’re thinking. Tonali not only looks like Pirlo — the player Guidi is describing sounds a lot like Pirlo too. But Tonali’s old coach gives the notion short shrift. “All he’s got in common with Pirlo is the hair and the Brescia shirt,” Guidi insists. “Technically speaking, he’s totally different. Sandro does a lot off the ball. He throws himself into tackles. There’s a physical side to his game. I see Daniele De Rossi in him more than I see Pirlo.” 

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On the back of Brescia returning to the top flight for the first time in almost a decade, Tonali was crowned Serie B Player of the Year at the Gran Gala del Calcio. Though voted for by his peers, a source of understandable pride for Sandrino, it still felt like a case of the bandwagon being put in front of the horse. Tonali remains one of the most gossiped-about players in Italy’s sports dailies, not to mention on social media. Everyone wants to know his next move. Brescia’s owner Massimo Cellino resisted the temptation to sell last summer — “not even for crazy money” — and fears that Tonali would be swept away from Italy as Marco Verratti was by PSG in 2012 without ever making an appearance in Serie A never materialised. 

Playing in the top flight presented Tonali with a different, more exacting challenge, and not just because Cellino — one of Italy’s great mangia-allenatori, or coach-eaters — rediscovered his taste for sacking managers (he’s been through three already this season). Brescia, perhaps unsurprisingly, have less of the ball than they did in second tier. We’re talking an average of 39 per cent, the lowest in Serie A. They are also second for defensive action regains, which brings out the De Rossi-esque qualities Guidi touched on, particularly Tonali’s clever positioning and intuition when it comes to breaking up the play. While he isn’t quite as feisty in the tackle as Pierpaolo Bisoli’s son, Dimitri, StatsBomb data shows the 19-year-old makes more possession-adjusted interceptions than any of Brescia’s other midfielders. 

Under Eugenio Corini, the Swallows played a direct brand of football, with Tonali completing more long passes per 90 minutes (5.12) than his outfield team-mates. Brescia’s style makes it hard for Tonali to play as a pure regista — the classic deep-lying playmaker role associated with Pirlo. He does not impose himself on games through passing and passing alone. Full-backs Stefano Sabelli (40.04) and Ales Mateju (33.31) make more passes per 90 than Tonali (32.77), as does centre-back Andrea Cistana (34.59). That’s not exactly unusual for teams that build-up from the back. Nevertheless Tonali is composed with the ball at his feet — his pass completion rate drops a single percent when under pressure. Is it any wonder his former coach Roberto Boscaglia said: “The boy has the head of a 50-year-old on his shoulders.” 

Rather than progress up the pitch as, say, SPAL do, with phases of prolonged possession, Brescia play in transition. In terms of pace towards goal (the average speed of build-up in metres-per-second for possessions that end in shots), only Parma move the ball faster from one end of the pitch to the other. This, partly, explains why Tonali’s pass completion rate (70 per cent) isn’t anything to shout about. Often, he is tasked with playing forward into Brescia’s No 10 or the team’s two strikers; a risky business. What he does stand out in though is deep progressions and carries. Only Sabelli drives Brescia into the final third more often than Tonali. 

As a chance creator, he is at his most dangerous from set pieces. Tonali leads Brescia in assists (five) but only one of them came from open play and frankly it’s charitable to award it to him considering all he did was lay the ball off for Ernesto Torregrossa to hit a screamer from 35 yards against Cagliari. The rest are all indicative of his wicked delivery from corners and free kicks. Tonali’s first Serie A goal was supposed to be a cross aimed at the far post. Unintentionally, the strike looped over Genoa’s Ionut Radu and quite spectacularly snuck under the bar. On occasions when there’s a free kick in a more central position close to goal, Mario Balotelli and Jaromir Zmrhal tend to get the nod over Tonali. At the moment, there is no sign of his own take on Pirlo’s famous maledetta, his signature free kick style.

Still, Tonali has continued to shine in a poor team. The box office ticket at the Rigamonti was supposed to be Balotelli returning to Italy to inspire his hometown club to a mid-table finish. People watch Brescia for Tonali instead. He made his debut for Italy against Liechtenstein last October and with the Euros moving to next summer, he now has an extra year to dislodge one of Jorginho, Nicolo Barella and Verratti in the Azzurri’s midfield. Tonali started Italy’s last two qualifiers with Roberto Mancini deploying him next to Jorginho as a double pivot. The Italy boss believes Tonali “has the physical attributes to play on the left or the right as an No 8” and, ever willing to prove a point, used him on one side against Bosnia and Herzegovina and the other against Armenia. 

“He can cover every position in midfield,” Guidi says. Asked for a memory of Tonali, he remembers calling him up for the Under-19 Euros (with Moise Kean and Nicolo Zaniolo) when he was already a first-team regular at Brescia and in the orbit of Italy’s under-21s. “A lot of kids in that situation get a bit big-headed and aren’t as motivated when they come back down a level. They can act like a prima donna. But that’s not Sandro. He arrived and was immediately a leader. He set the example. The games that players tend to find hardest to get up for — in our case Estonia and Finland, neither of whom were as good as us — well, he approached them as if they were as big as they come and of huge significance.” In the end Italy reached the final, succumbing to Portugal 4-3 only after extra time.

Cellino sees the same humility. “Sandro has the modesty of one of those holding midfielders, with two left feet but the talent of a world-class player,” he told Tuttosport. You can bet the former Cagliari and Leeds owner will drive a hard bargain for him in the summer. Maybe not too hard, though. “Whoever wants Tonali will have to show me and the boy some love,” Cellino said. “I ask that they show us respect, time their move right, and don’t end up distracting him. This matters more to me than the money. That was the case with Radja Nainggolan at Cagliari. Juve offered more than anyone else but Roma wanted him more.”

Tonali isn’t the next Pirlo. But guess what — we’ll probably be back here in 10 or 15 years’ time asking: “Who is the next Tonali?”

 

[DDA 9,941]

Fantastic talent. Should stay away from the Prem though. He is built for Italian or Spanish football.

[Vesper 30,224]

11 hours ago, DDA said:

Fantastic talent. Should stay away from the Prem though. He is built for Italian or Spanish football.

he would be a terror on Barca I think

[NikkiCFC 8,336]

So much talk was made about this kid over the last couple of years. Things don't look so good now? First season in Milan he could not make it in starting 11. Still played over 2000 mins but did not made any impact. Not in Italian squad as well. Milan did mistake by letting Locatelli go.