The whole Tonali thing rubbed me up the wrong way because of how Newcastle handled it, sure they have to support their player etc but these are grown adults, very wealthy adults at that and they’re not stupid.
They’re very well aware of the rules and know gambling within the sport is illegal, so I find it hard to sympathise with players like Tonali and his cabal. You’ve done an illegal thing and there are consequences for it… that’s it really.
What made me laugh was Newcastle/the player angling it as an addiction problem - which it may be in some cases like Ivan Toney’s, but the majority of players get by fine without gambling as far as we know. There are rules for a reason, you already live privileges lives, why put your career or the games integrity at risk?
Tbf I’d go the other way with this, I think it shows how much better footballers get looked after now (which yes is because they’re basically business assets), but not long ago this and other addictions were completely normal in football and would be completely taboo in most cases. I don’t buy the addiction in this case but most I do, and either way they are humans anyway addiction can come from just a couple of bad decisions, which anyone can make given circumstances.