Newcastle United's midfield on the opening day of the season could include internationals from Brazil and Italy. That is a statement worth repeating. It was only two years ago that Ryan Fraser was being retrained as a number eight.
Now, however, Newcastle are closing in on the signing of AC Milan star Sandro Tonali in a move that feels like a statement - beyond the mere numbers involved. Tonali, after all, is a boyhood AC Milan fan, a man who took a pay cut to achieve his dream move to the San Siro, a leader who was earmarked as a future captain of the club.
This was a player who only signed a new long-term contract with AC Milan less than a year ago yet Newcastle have managed not only to convince the Serie A giants to let him go but, most impressively, persuaded Tonali to leave. Yes, Tonali stands to earn a sizable wage increase as a result, but that is not the only factor at play here. If it was just about the money, Tonali would follow the lead of another international midfielder, Ruben Neves, and head to Saudi Arabia. Few know that better than Nikolas Spalek, a former team-mate of Tonali's at Brescia.
READ MORE: Leicester resigned as Spurs chief Daniel Levy tells truth about Newcastle target James Maddison
"Italian guys love Serie A but the Premier League is the top for every football player," he told ChronicleLive. "Everyone wants to play in the Premier League. That's why Sandro will join Newcastle. He's not going from a small, mid-table club. To leave AC Milan for Newcastle means he wants to join the Premier League."
Yes, Tonali, has previously spoken about spending the rest of his career at AC MIlan, but, in the same sentence, the Italy international also cautioned: "It's too early to make promises like that." Those final words proved rather prophetic.
Indeed, it is a mark of the dream Tonali, a Scudetto winner, has been sold by Newcastle that the midfielder is prepared to leave his homeland for the first time. Not only will Tonali be tasked with helping establish Newcastle among the elite - the 23-year-old will also use his own title-winning experience to aid the Magpies' challenge for trophies at the very highest level in the future. That prospect is a lot more realistic now than it was 18 months ago.
Kieran Trippier and Bruno Guimaraes, for instance, joined a side in the relegation zone at the time. Sven Botman and Alexander Isak, meanwhile, never imagined Newcastle would qualify for the Champions League just a season into their respective long-term contracts.
That Newcastle now have a seat at Europe's top table highlights the remarkable progress the club have made under Eddie Howe and that only strengthened the Magpies' hand with this ambitious move for Tonali. It was an overall package that not even AC Milan, the seven-time winners of the Champions League, could rival - 12 months on from the black-and-whites winning the race to sign Sven Botman, who was also a longstanding target of the Rossoneri.
Clearly, the gap is narrowing - on and off the field. Milan posted revenues of £254.3m in their last set of financial accounts, which represented a 14% increase on the previous year. Newcastle, though, recorded a figure of £180m in the same period in a season the Magpies finished in 11th place in the Premier League in the first campaign under the new ownership.
It was once Milan who raided clubs for their best players, but now the shoe is on the other foot as Ivan Gazidis, the former CEO of the Rossoneri, feared.
“The Premier League is the Super League and it’s moving away from the other European Leagues," the former Arsenal chief executive said back in April. "There’s nothing to say against the Premier League. They’ve done an extraordinary job, but the rest of European football is looking forward and wondering what the future will be. Is all the money and all the best players going to end up in the Premier League — and what does that mean for everybody else?”
We are about to find out.
