Sandro Tonali was recently made official by Tottenham.
Tottenham have confirmed that Sandro Tonali will wear the number 16 shirt at the club, with the announcement coming shortly after his £100m signing was made official on Monday. It is a number that carries genuine weight in Spurs history, and one that the Italian will hope he can make his own.
Before Sandro Tonali – A history of Tottenham players who have worn the number 16 shirt
The number 16 shirt at Tottenham has passed through some notable hands. Gareth Bale wore it in the early part of his Spurs career before switching to number 11, the same number he made iconic during his time at Real Madrid. Kieran Trippier held it during his time at the club before departing for Atletico Madrid in 2019. Kyle Walker-Peters also wore it, as did Arnaut Danjuma and, most recently, Timo Werner, who spent the second half of the 2023/24 season on loan at the club from RB Leipzig.
Further back, the shirt was worn by Andros Townsend, Moussa Sissoko and the South Korean left-back Lee Young-pyo, who was a firm fan favourite at White Hart Lane in the mid-2000s. Steffen Iversen and Chris Armstrong, two of Spurs’ more dependable forwards of the late 1990s, also had stints in the number 16.
It is not a number that has belonged to any single defining figure in the club’s history, which means Tonali has a clean opportunity to stamp his authority on it. Given the fee paid and the expectation that comes with it, the hope at N17 is that the number 16 shirt becomes associated with him for the next several years. On the evidence of his career so far, that is far from a stretch.