Former Italy striker Antonio Cassano has unloaded on a Tottenham Hotspur star he believes is ‘really poor’, despite the player having by far his best performance for the club in Saturday’s 1-1 draw at Manchester United.
It’s been a shocking start to the new campaign for Roberto De Zerbi and Spurs, who sit 19th in the table after six games and remain without a win.
The game at Old Trafford over the weekend followed a similar pattern to a number of other performances this term, in that Tottenham were fairly dominant but failed to take any of the multiple chances they created.
However, after going behind and also seeing Rodrigo Bentancur red-carded, De Zerbi’s men showed some real fight to earn a late point courtesy of Dominic Solanke’s header.
One of the players who led from the front during a feisty contest was £100million summer signing Sandro Tonali, who was outstanding in the middle of the park and even switched to left-back late in the game as De Zerbi brought on more attackers from the bench.
The Italy international has looked anything but a £100m player to start the season, with the 26-year-old struggling to replicate anything like the form he showed while at Newcastle United.
And it appears that Cassano is not a fan at all, coming off the back of a long international break where Tonali started three of Italy’s four games and played 262 minutes in total.
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Cassano tears into ‘really poor’ Tonali
Indeed, despite chalking up an assist at Old Trafford and producing his best display in a Spurs shirt to date, Cassano, who is a regular on the Viva El Futbol podcast, spoke about the midfielders that Italy have available to the national team right now.
The former striker made it clear that he isn’t a fan of many of them, including Tonali, who he believes isn’t as good as Inter Milan’s Nicolo Barella.
Cassano said, via FCInter1908: “Behind Barella, there are people worse than him. Also, in my opinion, he’s both poor and overrated; I’ve been saying this for years, and you know it.”
Offering opinion on Tonali, he added: “€110m for Tonali, €110m, madness, he’s really poor too. All coaches can have ideas.
“Tonali at €75m for Newcastle and €110m for Tottenham, it means it’s right that I’m out of football.”
Tonali and Spurs are back in action on Monday evening when they host a Coventry City side fresh off thrashing Newcastle in the Premier League.