Today in Serie A – May 15, 2016: Totò Di Natale Bid Farewell to Football | OneFootball

On May 15, 2016, the best Serie A striker from the 2010s hung his boots. And, if the name Antonio “Totò” Di Natale doesn’t ring much of a bell, it’s only because he chose to spend most of his career at Udinese and enjoyed relatively little visibility outside of the Belpaese.

A gifted, fast-paced, versatile striker, Di Natale was an absolute goal machine. He found the back of the net 209 times in Serie A, which makes him the 6th best all-time scorer in the Italian top-flight. He also won back-to-back capocannoniere titles in 2009/10 and 2010/11.

He would not have looked out of place on the front line of any major Serie A club and, perhaps, even internationally. However, for some reason, he preferred to stay with Udinese – one of the very few remaining examples of a player that decides to marry a club for life.

Di Natale landed in Udine in 2004, after making his Serie A debut with Empoli the previous season. He would never leave.

All good stories come to an end though, and so, a couple weeks before the 2015/16 season finale, Antonio Di Natale, now aged 39, announced that the upcoming home game against one-season wonder Carpi would be his last career appearance.

It’s unfortunate that he was kept on the bench for most of the game. However, when he finally came in on 78 minutes, with Udinese down 0-2 to a Carpi side desperately battling relegation, it took him only one minute to leave a mark on his final showdown, as he converted the spot kick that set the score to 1-2.