Despite Antonio di Natale's knee injury, Udinese management are proud of their contingent in the current Italy squad.

Udinese sports chief Pietro Leonardi said: "In the last four or five years we have expanded our strategy of buying Italian players as well as from overseas and they are proving their worth.

"The big clubs were targeting only the already famous names, so we made the most of that and went for the younger talents like Pepe, [Gaetano] D'Agostino or Di Natale when he was at Empoli."