Udinese is located in the far east of Italy, near the border with Slovenia. Udine is a real student city where there is always something happening. The local football pride has a surprisingly nice stadium.
Udinese is a club that traditionally is a real challenger of the Italian top teams, although nowadays, the Bianconeri are lower in the bottom half of the table than they would 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 of that calibre is something they really miss.
Stadio Friuli has been the home of Udinese since 1976 but is still one of the more modern stadiums in Italy. In the last couple of years, it has been renovated, the capacity has been lowered (from over 41.000 to 25.000) and it has become a real football stadium. The running track was removed and all the stands are now covered by roofs, a blessing for the acoustics 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 colours 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 on 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 in Stadio Moretti. The stadium was named after Birra Moretti, the famous beer brand from Udine. Nowadays, you can only the orange and white entrance gate of the former arena here. It has now been turned into Parco Moretti, a modern park.
Udinese is one of the oldest clubs in Italy but hasn't won that much. They never won a Scudetto nor a Coppa Italia. But sometimes, there's reason to celebrate in Udine. 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 on the Via Tricesimo in the north of Udine. At first glance, it doesn't look that nice, but from the inside the restaurant is a great and well-known place in Udine. Mainly because of some regular customers. Many great footballers have had dinner here, Antonio 'Toto' di Natale in particular, arguably the biggest player in the history of Udinese. He is good friends with the owners of the restaurant, who are big football fans themselves. This becomes obvious when you go to the toilets down in the basement. The stairwell is filled with kits of pretty much everyone who means something in Italian football, from Diego Maradona to Michel Platini.
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 passed away in his sleep at the age of 31. His room hasn't been used since, so in a way, it has become a bit of a 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, including Udinese.
The Dacia Arena is close to the A23, the motorway west of Udine. When you take the exit Udine - Stadio Friuli you'll drive almost into the stadium. You can park your car in the large 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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