Gianpaolo Pozzo is today celebrating his 35th anniversary as the paron – or president – of Udinese Calcio.
Pozzo officially became the majority shareholder of the club on 28 July 1986, succeeding Lamberto Mazza, who had been in charge since June 1981.
It was a tough start to life at Udinese for Pozzo, with star players Andrea Carnevale, Luigi De Agostini and Marco Baroni leaving the club that summer. Yet there was worse to come as Udinese were penalised for a match-fixing scandal that had occurred the previous season, on Mazza’s watch. The initial sanction was relegation to Serie B, though this was later reduced to a nine-point deduction to be applied in the following season. Pozzo signed World Cup-winners Francesco Graziani, Fulvio Collovati and Daniel Berton to fire Udinese’s attempt at the impossible, but there was nothing to be done as the Bianconeri finished bottom on 15 points (though they would have stayed up, had there been no points deduction).
Pozzo set about rebuilding the side, but Udinese struggled to establish themselves and went up and down between Serie A and Serie B until 1994.
“It won’t always be this way,” Pozzo once said. “We need to solve the problems we inherited from the previous regime, then we’ll start planning to enable the team to make the step up. We want to be stronger and more competitive, on the European stage too.”
These words would prove to be prophetic. Pozzo displayed his knack for unearthing raw talent (Oliver Bierhoff and Marcio Amoroso spring to mind) and used the Bosman Rule to his advantage to build a strong team that would qualify for the UEFA Cup for the first time in the 1996/97 season, ushering in a period of success for the Bianconeri.
Some wonderful players have pulled on the black and white shirt over the course of Pozzo’s 35-year reign, including Antonio Di Natale, Alexis Sanchez, Oliver Bierhoff, Marcio Amoroso, David Pizarro, Abel Balbo, Nestor Sensini, Fabio Rossitto, Valerio Bertotto, Alessandro Calori, Thomas Helveg, Martin Jorgensen, Giuliano Giannichedda, Paolino Poggi, Stefano Fiore, Fabio Quagliarella, Vincenzo Iaquinta, Marek Jankulowski, Giampiero Pinzi, Felipe Dalbelo, Sulley Muntari, Cristian Zapata, Mauricio Isla, Kwadwo Asamoah, Gokhan Inler, Samir Handanovic, Dusan Basta, Medhi Benatia, Roberto Pereyra, Juan Guillermo Cuadrado, Marques Loureiro Allan, Piotr Zielinski, Bruno Fernandes and Rodrigo De Paul.
Under Pozzo, Udinese undertook the considerable task of renovating the Stadio Friuli, a process that began in 2014 and concluded in January 2016 with the inauguration of the Dacia Arena, which is now seen as one of the best sports stadiums in Italy and indeed was chosen to host the final of the European Under-21 Championship on 30 June 2019.
This year, Udinese will compete in Serie A for the 27th consecutive season. In that period, the team has finished third twice, fourth twice, fifth once and sixth twice, competing in Europe in 11 separate seasons.