Gian Luca Nani has given his assessment of the 2024/25 season in a long interview with TV 12.
"If we analyse the season as a whole, it's obviously positive,” the group technical director began. “The last few games left us feeling disappointed but if we go back to the start we had three objectives: to stay up, ideally earlier than last season – and we did that with 12 games to spare; to playing attacking football – and we did that by playing an exciting, technical brand of football and showing personality in Naples, Bergamo and Milan, Atalanta; and to develop young players – and we did that with the likes of [Jaka] Bijol, [Lorenzo] Lucca, [Oumar] Solet, [Arthur] Atta and [Iker] Bravo establishing themselves, then we had [Matteo] Palma, a 17-year-old, make his debut against Fiorentina.
“I think Udinese achieved all those targets and continued – even improving on recent years – the trend that has been the miracle of the Pozzo family. Let's not forget that Udinese is one of the clubs that has been in Serie A for the most time and the other four are all top teams with huge fanbases and world-class players. I think it's been a good season. Obviously when you do well until the last ten games then you expect a bit more and that's when we weren't able to maintain expectations after the first part of the season, but the overall evaluation of the season has to be positive.”
During the season, Gianpaolo Pozzo mentioned the desire to get back into Europe.
“He's right. We should all dream big. I agree with him. I'd like to keep raising the bar, while remembering that first and foremost Udinese must always maintain it's top-flight status.
“We're used to good results but you get results through hard work and organisation, and that hasn't just been put together this season – it's 40 years of history. It was the owner's birthday on Sunday and we wanted to give him and our fans a present – to thank them for their constant support – by playing well and getting a win. We really wanted that. We're sorry to have finished with a defeat but we battled.
“We shouldn't forget that we're a club from a city of 100,000 inhabitants playing against teams representing cities with millions of inhabitants and very different budgets who don't always get into Europe, like Lazio and Milan, and sometimes find themselves near the bottom of the table, like Roma at the start of the season
“We must be proud, as the president says, and keep raising the bar while remembering who we are. Those are the foundations and on top of that we must always try to do better. We all want to play in Europe, it's our dream, but we have to do things judiciously, keeping within our limits and our working methods.”