Udinese comes from the far east of Italy, near the border with Slovenia. Udine is a real student city where always is something to experience, and the local football pride has a surprisingly fun stadium.
Udinese, a club who traditionally are a real challenger of the Italian top teams, although the Bianconeri stand more in the bottom half of the table than they'd obviously prefer. Udinese is internationally best-known for its great tradition of top strikers: from Marcos Amoroso and Oliver Bierhoff to typical Italian bombers like Antonio di Natale, Vincenzo Iaquinta and Fabio Quagliarella. At the moment, a striker from that caliber is something they really miss.
The Stadio Friuli has been the home of Udinese already since 1976, but still is one of the more modern stadiums of Italy. Over the last couple of years it has been renovated whereby the capacity had been lowered (from over 41.000 to 25.000) and it has become a real football stadium. The running track has been removed and all the stands are covered now, a blessing for the acoustic of the stadium. The only surviving part of the old stadium is the curvy main stand, which - except for the roof - stands alone from the rest of the stadium. It has also been renamed to 'Dacia Arena'. The only negative for us is the horrible tutti-frutti of colors of the seats.
The Piazza Rizzi feels like a square in a little village: there's a church, little traffic and you can hardly imagine that there's a big stadium around the corner. But it is like that, and the Bar allo Stadio at the Piazza Rizzi is a real Udinese bar. Before and after matches, the tifosi of the club gather here to have a couple of drinks.
Until 1976 Udinese played near the city centre of the Stadio Moretti. The stadium had it's name from Birra Moretti, the famous beer brand coming from Udinese. Just the orange and white entrance gate at the Via Luigi Moretti still exists. On the place of the stadium is now the Parco Moretti, a modern park.
Udinese is one of the oldest clubs of Italy, but hasn't won that much actually. They never won a Scudetto nor a Coppa Italia. But sometimes, there's reason to celebrate in Udinese. Qualification for Champions League football in 2011 brought thousands of Bianconeri to the Piazza della Liberta in the centre of the town.
Ristorante Ancona Due is at the Via Tricesimo in the north of Udine, in a on a first sight not so nice surrounding. From the inside, Ancona Due is a great and well-known place in Udine, not in the last because of the regular visitors of the restaurant. Many great football came to have dinner here, with Antonio 'Toto' di Natale in particular. Arguably the biggest player in the history of Udinese is good friends with the owners of the restaurant, who are big football fans. To find that out, you just have to go to the toilets in the basement. In the stairwell there are shirts of pretty much everyone who means something in Italian football, so from Diego Maradona and Michel Platini too.
A little further at the Via Tricesimo you'll find, at the junction with the Via Padova, Hotel Là Di Moret. It's traditionally the hotel where the away team sleeps the night before a game at Udinese. Also in 2018, when Fiorentina slept here and they missed captain Davide Astori at breakfast. The Italian international went to bed the night before and didn't woke up anymore, only 31 years old. His room hasn't been used since, as a weird way of memorial.
You can buy tickets for Udinese easily on the website of Ticketone, an official ticketing site for events in Italy and also for several football clubs, among which Udinese.
The Dacia Arena is close to the A23, the motorway west of Udine. When you take exit Udine - Stadio Friuli you'll drive almost into the stadium. You can park your car on the extensive parking lots around the Dacia Arena.
From the train station of Udine bus 9 goes to the stadium, get off the bus at Via Mainerio.
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