Sandro Tonali stepped into a Tottenham Hotspur shirt for the first time this week, and by the time the club made it official, he had already rewritten a line in its record books. His move from Newcastle United, worth up to €115 million, surpassed Tottenham’s previous club record of €65 million paid for Xavi Simons, nearly doubling the mark set just months earlier.
The transfer is structured as a fixed €108 million with a further €9 million available in add-ons. Converted into pounds, British outlets described the same deal as £92.5 million fixed with £7.5 million in bonuses, up to £100 million in total, a reminder of how differently the same figures can read depending on the currency used to report them. Either way, it makes Tonali the most expensive Italian player in the sport’s history, moving past the roughly €68.5 million previously paid for Mateo Retegui, which had stood as the previous record for an Italian player transfer.
Tottenham confirmed the signing, still subject to a work permit, on July 6. Tonali put pen to paper on a contract running until the summer of 2032, tying him to the club for the better part of a decade and giving Tottenham long-term cover for a fee that size.
“I’m very happy to be here. When I arrived at the Club today, it felt fantastic. People said about there being four or five clubs – there was only one,” Tonali said.
He added that his conversation with head coach Roberto De Zerbi ran close to two hours, touching on everything from the fanbase to the stadium and the way the team plays, and that the decision to join Tottenham felt instant once that meeting ended.
A Coach Who Knew Him From Brescia
De Zerbi, who took charge at Tottenham this summer, framed the pursuit as a personal one. “Sandro is a special player and a great signing for our Club. I have followed him for a long time, as he came through the youth system at my hometown club, Brescia, and I’m so happy to be working with him now,” the coach said.
Tonali arrived at Newcastle from AC Milan in 2023 but served a 10-month suspension for betting-related violations before establishing himself as a key midfielder alongside Bruno Guimarães. He worked his way back into the side, helped Newcastle win the EFL Cup in 2025, and left Tyneside as one of the club’s most important players just three years after his ban.
Newcastle paid AC Milan roughly €70 million, about £55 million at the time, for Tonali in 2023. Selling him to Tottenham three years later turned that deal into one of the more lucrative pieces of business in the Premier League this summer, netting the club a profit worth tens of millions of euros, as much as €45 million, on a player they had signed while he was still serving his suspension.
Manchester City and Arsenal were also in the race for the midfielder, but De Zerbi’s appointment as head coach was an important factor in his decision to join Tottenham instead. The scale of the fee underlines how quickly Tottenham’s transfer ceiling has risen this summer, with the Xavi Simons deal standing as the club’s outright transfer record before Tonali’s bonus-laden arrival pushed it aside by nearly €50 million.
The Tonali deal was the headline arrival in a summer of spending that also brought Andy Robertson, Marcos Senesi, Martin Dúbravka, Mateus Fernandes and Jan Paul van Hecke to north London. Combined, Tottenham’s outlay in the window passed €276 million, with the other five signings accounting for roughly €161 million of that total.
