The Udinese Paradox: Zico, Pozzos and Craving a Good Time, Not a Long Time – Calcio England
Published on: January 3, 2025
The last time Udinese played outside Serie A, the youthful Ajax team of Edgar Davids, Clarence Seedorf and Patrick Kluivert had just been crowned champions of Europe, Carlo Ancelotti was preparing for his first managerial assignment with Reggiana and Bosman had yet to enter football’s lexicon.
Udinese’s continuous thirty-year residency in Italy’s top tier – longer than Juventus, Napoli or Atalanta – is an extraordinary feat that has sustained through the seismic shifts in the footballing landscape.
Yet, for Udinese’s tifosi, this longevity has become both a triumph and a frustration. They yearn for more than just stability; they crave excitement, ambition, and a return to the days when their club dared to dream big.
The Zico Years and Arrival of The Pozzo Family
The city of Udine, located in the northeast corner of Italy, close to the Slovenian border, is the most atypical of Italian cities. Snow-capped Alpine peaks provide a breathtaking backdrop and a sombre reminder of the city’s role on the front line of The Great War. The climate, dialect, architecture, and cuisine often bear more resemblance to Vienna than Rome.
With around 100,000 people, roughly the size of Carlisle, their football team had never graced Serie A until the 1950s. As recently as the 1970s, they were playing in the semi-professional Anglo-Italian Cup against Stafford Rangers and Minehead.
A transformative moment came in 1983 when Brazilian maestro Zico, considered one of the world’s best players, joined Udinese. When subversive political influences sought to derail the transfer, irate fans took to the streets in protest, famously threatening secession if the deal did not proceed.
Zico’s brilliance captivated the city and briefly elevated Udinese into the upper echelons of Italian football. However, financial struggles and a betting scandal ultimately caused that dream to unravel.
Cue the arrival of local entrepreneur Giampaolo Pozzo as owner in summer 1986.
Nearly forty years on, the Pozzo name has become synonymous with Udinese, though success didn’t come overnight. They spent an uncertain first decade oscillating between Serie A and B, as Pozzo learned to translate his business acumen to the world of football, at times sailing close to the wind with accusations of match-fixing and false accounting.
A Visionary Global Strategy
The cornerstone of Udinese’s long-term Serie A success is the groundbreaking scouting network orchestrated by Pozzo’s son, Gino. In the mid-1990s, long before data analytics revolutionised player recruitment, Udinese invested in a global network of scouts across Europe, Africa and South America. In Udine, they developed a state-of-the-art video analysis facility, equipped with 15 monitors and satellite connections to major and minor leagues worldwide.
At the same time, Udinese became pioneers in pastoral care for their foreign players, offering assistance with everything from accommodation to bank accounts and even a club creche. Udinese did everything in their power to ensure their investments were looked after. While commonplace today, this was a visionary approach in the 1990s.
Free of the nocturnal distractions found in larger cities and with an abundance of clean Alpine air, Udine has proven the ideal setting for nurturing young talent. Udinese became the gateway to top-level European football for a host of now-household names; Néstor Sensini, Abel Balbo, Alexis Sánchez, Juan Cuadrado, and Luis Muriel. All arrived in Friuli as relative unknowns and departed for handsome sums.
Success On The Field And On The Balance Sheet
On the pitch, the late 1990s saw the rise of coach Alberto Zaccheroni and his dynamic 3-4-3 formation. His exhilarating Udinese side of Thomas Helveg, Marcio Amoroso and Oliver Bierhoff finished in third place and qualified for the UEFA Cup in four consecutive campaigns. A second peak followed in the early 2000s under Luciano Spalletti, who led the club to its first-ever Champions League qualification, showcasing a new generation of talent in Sulley Muntari, David Pizarro, and Antonio Di Natale.
Rival clubs clamoured to imitate the Udinese transfer market blueprint, but few achieved their scale of success. Udinese recorded a net gain in the transfer market of €165million in the period 2010-2018; the highest in Italy and second only to Monaco and Lille in Europe, according to the CIES Football Observatory. The profits of the Pozzo strategy enabled them to expand their stable of clubs to include Granada (2009-2016) and Watford (2012-present).
Under the Pozzos, Udinese also became one of the few clubs in Italy to successfully navigate the bureaucratic maze of stadium redevelopment. In 2013, they took a 99-year lease from the municipality and transformed their 1970s-era open-air bowl into a modern arena worthy of Europe’s top leagues.
Everything Changes: A New Era
As the Pozzo football empire expanded its reach across Europe, family resources and attention were split across three clubs, diluting the once-dominant Udinese model. Many promising young players who might previously have fitted the Udinese archetype ended up in either Hertfordshire or Andalusia, whilst a revolving door of misfits circulated between the three clubs.
The perceived prioritisation of Watford and the potential riches of English football has frequently provoked frustration and protest amongst Udinese’s fans. The numbers tell a compelling story; prior to 2013, when the Pozzo’s became established at Watford, Udinese’s average Serie A finishing position was 8th, since then it has been 14th.
The club’s days in the Champions League are now a distant memory. The last top-half finish came over a decade ago. A series of Coppa Italia semi-finals are the closest the club have come to silverware under the Pozzo’s. Survival has become the order of the day.
The 2023-24 season saw Udinese come dangerously close to relegation, only to survive thanks to a dramatic final-day victory. This near-miss led Gino Pozzo to declare that the club had “suffered enough” and that his goal was now to build a mid-table team – a sentiment that, while intended to be reassuring, left many fans understandably feeling deflated.
True to form, this summer, Udinese sold their star player Lazar Samardžić to Atalanta, while a cosmopolitan band of summer signings arrived from the Netherlands, Chile, Romania, Sweden, Poland, Portugal, France and – of course – Watford.
Perhaps the most unexpected move was the appointment of coach Kosta Runjaic, experienced in Germany but little known in Italy. A stellar start to the season saw him guide Udinese briefly to the top of the league before slipping back to mid-table.
The homecoming of injury-troubled Alexis Sánchez has yet to pay off, but Runjaic has given a new lease of life to the veteran French forward Florian Thauvin.
Alongside him, the stock of Lorenzo Lucca – once a hot prospect in Italian football and still only 24 – is rising rapidly once again. However, the next big money departure from Udine could be the commanding Slovenian centre-back Jaka Bijol, who has attracted the interest of both Inter and Napoli.
The Paradox
The achievements of Udinese and the Pozzo family over the past four decades are nothing short of a provincial miracle. The strongest endorsement of their visionary approach comes from the stream of investors and executives who have attempted to replicate their model.
The rewards for discovering hidden gems in football’s overlooked corners have only grown, and the competition has intensified. As Udinese’s competitive advantage has eroded and the business of football has evolved around them, they have adapted and continued to prosper.
Yet, what appears to be a remarkable success story to outsiders, now feels like stagnation to the insiders. After the euphoria of the 1990s and 2000s, each new season has a sense of déjà vu for Udinese tifosi, offering only varying shades of a bottom-half finish.
Perhaps the Pozzos are now the victims of those earlier successes and the inflated expectations that followed? Regardless, to live life always looking down – and never up – is a bleak existence for Udinese’s loyal supporters.
Are Udinese thriving or surviving? It’s a matter of perspective.
