Sandro Tonali remembers that rejection at Inter. The words of the midfielder, who is still very attached to the Rossoneri colors
Tonali: “No all’Inter, Maldini ha cambiato tutto. Vi racconto il legame col Milan” (LaPresse) – MilanLive.it
Sandro Tonali is back in the news. He does so from the columns of La Repubblica. The Italian midfielder, who flew to Newcastle after his experience at AC Milan, was reborn to a new life once he returned from disqualification. He is a different person who has gone through a major journey to put his gambling addiction behind him:
“In the months away from the field, I spent a lot of time with the psychologist. His job was to make me understand how I had fallen into it. Usually you understand it the moment you lose something: family, job, salary. Instead, in my case, the affordability didn’t make me realize how serious it was.”
“It was a difficult recovery job,” Sandro Tonali continued, “I couldn’t take specific drugs, because with 95 percent of those I would have tested positive in anti-doping, so it was all a mental journey: lasting months, with psychologist and psychiatrist. In the first two months I was detached from everyone, then re-entering life, training every day without having the game, I understood that I was paying for what I had done.”
No all’Inter: il racconto di Tonali
No all’Inter: il racconto di Tonali (LaPresse) – MilanLive.it
In the course of the long interview, soccer and a love born as a child are inevitably mentioned: “It was one of the first dreams and it was enough for me: the others I left alone. As a child, in Lombardy1 in Milan, I was the best and in Piacenza also, despite being the shortest. Instead at Brescia I had to overcome difficulties. But passion, having fun and being able to do things that others struggled to do, allowed me to realize that I was better than average.”
Then comes a joke about Milan and that no to the Nerazzurri: “I happened to think about when I could go to Inter. I never accepted it: not because it is not a strong team, but I did not consider myself 100 percent happy. Every day it was talked about. I would hear from my attorney and the doubts were great. The mountain I didn’t want to climb over. Paolo Maldini’s call changed everything, he made me happy and I said, “Either I go to Milan or I stay at Brescia.”
A love that comes from afar: “My dad passed it on to me, this bond with Milan. I used to have breakfast with Gattuso’s Rossoneri cup and when it broke I forced my mom to fix it bit by bit. When the transfer materialized, I asked Rino for permission to wear his No. 8.”
The article Tonali: “No to Inter, Maldini changed everything. I tell you about the connection with Milan” was written and published in its original version on Milanlive.it.
