Serie A

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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This article is about the Italian football league. For other uses, see Serie A
(disambiguation).

Serie A

Organising body Lega Serie A

Founded 1898; 125 years ago

1929 (as round-robin)
 Country Italy

Confederation UEFA

Number of teams 20 (since 2004–05)

Level on pyramid 1

Relegation to Serie B

 Coppa Italia
Domestic cup(s)
 Supercoppa Italiana

International cup(s)  UEFA Champions League

 UEFA Europa League

 UEFA Europa Conference League

Current champions AC Milan (19th title)

(2021–22)

Most championships Juventus (36 titles)

Most appearances  Gianluigi Buffon (657)

Top goalscorer Silvio Piola (274)

TV partners List of broadcasters

Website legaseriea.it

Current: 2022–23 Serie A

The Serie A (Italian pronunciation: [ˈsɛːrje ˈa][1]), also called Serie A TIM for

national sponsorship with TIM,[2] is a professional league competition
for football clubs located at the top of the Italian football league system and the
winner is awarded the Scudetto and the Coppa Campioni d'Italia. It has been
operating as a round-robin tournament for over ninety years since the 1929–30
season. It had been organized by the Direttorio Divisioni Superiori until 1943 and
the Lega Calcio until 2010, when the Lega Serie A was created for the 2010–11
season. Serie A is regarded as one of the best football leagues in the world and it
is often depicted as the most tactical and defensively sound national league. [3] Serie
A was the world's strongest national league in 2020 according to IFFHS,[4] and is
ranked fourth among European leagues according to UEFA's league coefficient –
behind the Bundesliga, La Liga and the Premier League, and ahead of Ligue 1 –
which is based on the performance of Italian clubs in the Champions League and
the Europa League during the previous five years. Serie A led the UEFA
ranking from 1986 to 1988 and from 1990 to 1999.[5]
In its current format, the Italian Football Championship was revised from having
regional and interregional rounds, to a single-tier league from the 1929–30 season
onwards. The championship titles won before 1929 are officially recognised
by FIGC with the same weighting as titles that were subsequently awarded.
Similarly, the 1945–46 season, when the round-robin was suspended and the
league was played over two geographical groups due to the ravages of World War
II, is not statistically considered, even if its title is fully official. [6]
The league hosts three of the world's most famous clubs as Juventus, AC
Milan and Inter Milan, all founding members of the G-14, a group which
represented the largest and most prestigious European football clubs from 2000 to
2008,[7] with the first two also being founding members of its successive
organisation, European Club Association (ECA). More players have won the Ballon
d'Or award while playing at a Serie A club than any league in the world other than
Spain's La Liga,[8] although La Liga has the highest total number of Ballon d'Or
winners. Juventus, Italy's most successful club of the 20th century [9] and the most
winning Italian team,[10] is tied for sixth in Europe and twelfth in the world with the
most official international titles with eleven. [11] Prior the first Europa Conference
League final in 2022, it was also the only one in the world to have won all the
historical five official confederation competitions, an achievement reached after its
triumph in the 1985 Intercontinental Cup and revalidated after winning a sixth
tournament, the UEFA Intertoto Cup, fourteen years later.[12] Milan is joint third club
overall for official international titles won with eighteen. [13] Inter, following their
achievements in the 2009–10 season, became the first Italian team to have
achieved a seasonal treble. It is also the team to have competed uninterruptedly
for the most time in the top flight of Italian football, having seen its debut in 1909. [14]
[15]
 All these clubs, along with Lazio, Fiorentina, Roma and Napoli, are known as the
"seven sisters" (sette sorelle) of Italian football.[16][17][18][19][20][note 1]
Serie A is one of the most storied football leagues in the world. Of the 100 greatest
footballers in history chosen by FourFourTwo magazine in 2017, 42 players have
played in Serie A, more than any other league in the world. [21] Juventus is the team
that has produced the most World Cup champions (27), with Inter (20), Roma (16)
and Milan (10), being respectively third, fourth and ninth in that ranking. [22]

History[edit]
Serie A, as it is structured today, began during the 1929–30 season. From 1898 to
1922, the competition was organised into regional groups. Because of ever
growing teams attending regional championships, the Italian Football
Federation (FIGC) split the CCI (Italian Football Confederation) in 1921, which
founded in Milan the Lega Nord (Northern Football League), ancestor of present-
day Lega Serie A. When CCI teams rejoined the FIGC created two interregional
divisions renaming Categories into Divisions and splitting FIGC sections into two
north–south leagues. In 1926, due to internal crises and fascist pressures, the
FIGC changed internal settings, adding southern teams to the national division,
ultimately leading to the 1929–30 final settlement. Torino were declared champions
in the 1948–49 season following a plane crash near the end of the season in which
the entire team was killed.[citation needed]
The Serie A Championship title is often referred to as the scudetto ("small shield")
because since the 1923–24 season, the winning team will bear a small coat of
arms with the Italian tricolour on their strip in the following season. The most
successful club is Juventus with 36 championships, followed by Inter Milan and AC
Milan with 19 championships. From the 2004–05 season onwards, an actual trophy
was awarded to club on the pitch after the last turn of the championship. The
trophy, called the Coppa Campioni d'Italia, has officially been used since the 1960–
61 season, but between 1961 and 2004 was consigned to the winning clubs at the
head office of the Lega Nazionale Professionisti.[citation needed]
In April 2009, Serie A announced a split from Serie B. Nineteen of the twenty clubs
voted in favour of the move in an argument over television rights; the relegation-
threatened Lecce had voted against the decision. Maurizio Beretta, the former
head of Italy's employers' association, became president of the new league. [23][24][25][26]
In April 2016, it was announced that Serie A was selected by the International
Football Association Board to test video replays, which were initially private for
the 2016–17 season, allowing them to become a live pilot phase, with replay
assistance implemented in the 2017–18 season.[27] On the decision, FIGC
President Carlo Tavecchio said, "We were among the first supporters of using
technology on the pitch and we believe we have everything required to offer our
contribution to this important experiment." [28]