Newcastle’s sporting director Dan Ashworth has revealed that current rules would NOT stop us signing a player from the Saudi Pro League as a short-term replacement for Sandro Tonali.
Tonali was given a 10-month suspension for gambling, prompting the Magpies to look for a replacement in January. Since then, we’ve been heavily linked with a loan move for former Wolves star Ruben Neves; currently at PIF-owned Al-Hilal.
While there is currently ‘nothing to stop’ this potential transfer, Ashworth suggested that organisations may ‘look at things across related parties and what you can do to acquire players at a fair market value’.
As both Newcastle and Al Hilal are owned by PIF, other clubs are growing concerned that this would give us an unfair advantage and cause huge issues in the transfer market.
Here’s what Ashworth said on links to Neves and the potential to sign a player from Saudi:
“The current rules and regulations say there is nothing to stop it….currently.
“But there is a potential that the various different organisations will look at things across related-parties, and what you can do to acquire players at a fair market value, which have already been in place for quite a while.”
Newcastle are also thought to be exploring all legal avenues to discover if AC Milan knew anything about the betting, as well as launching an internal investigation into how this was missed by our recruitment team.
Ashworth is now in a ‘really difficult’ situation moving forwards, but wanted to add that their ‘first thought’ is to ‘protect’ Tonali and give him the support he needs. Here’s what he had to say on Tonali himself and how the ban came about:
“We first became aware of it when was there a potential allegation (against Tonali) on social media.
“The Italian federation went into Coverciano (Italy national-team centre, on October 12) to speak to Sandro. Within the next 48 hours everything went quickly and there was a potential he could get charged.
“Our first thought was to protect our player, he is part of our family, and to give him the help and support he needed. We wanted to understand exactly what had happened and work transparently with the authorities. Sandro wanted to do that from the off as well.
“It was a bit of a whirlwind really. We got to where we were on Friday (October 27) where the ban had been signed off and agreed with the Italian federation, FIFA and our own Football Association.”
