Country Italy Founded 1898 Most championships Juventus
(32 titles) | Confederation UEFA Number of teams 20 | |
 | ||
Current champions Juventus
(32nd title)
(2015–16) | ||
The Italian football champions (Italian: Scudetto, "little shield", plural: scudetti) are the annual winners of Serie A, Italy's premier football league competition. The title has been contested since 1898 in varying forms of competition. Juventus are the current champions, and have won a record of 32 titles. The first time the Scudetto was used was in 1924 when Genoa won its 9th championship title and decided to add a little shield to their shirt as to reward and celebrate themselves as champions.
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The finals of the first Italian Football Championship was decided in a single day with four teams competing, three from Turin and one from Genoa. The title was decided using a knock-out format between the finalists with Genoa, the inaugural winners. The knock-out format was used until the 1909–10 season, when a league consisting of nine teams was formed. The championship, which had been confined to a single league in the north of Italy, became a national competition in 1929 with the foundation of Serie A and Serie B.
Prima Categoria
The first official national football tournament was organised in 1898 by the Italian Football Federation (Italian: Federazione Italiana Giuoco Calcio, FIGC). This tournament, the final matches of the first Italian Football Championship, were held in a single day on 8 May 1898 in Turin. Genoa were crowned as champions, defeating Internazionale F.C. Torino by 3–1, following extra time. In the following years, the tournament (called Prima Categoria) was structured into regional groups with the winners of each group participating in a playoff with the eventual winners being declared champions.
In November 1907, FIF organised two championships in the same season:
- Federal Championship, where also foreign players (if they live in Italy) are allowed to play; the Federal Champions win Coppa Spensley
- Italian Championship, where only Italian players are allowed to play; the Italian Champions win Coppa Buni
FIF wanted to organize two different championships in order to allow weaker clubs composed only by Italian players ("squadre pure italiane", "pure italian teams") to compete and win against the big clubs composed mostly by stronger foreign players ("squadre spurie internazionali", "spurious international teams"). The big clubs (Genoa, Torino and Milan) withdrew from both the championships in order to protest against the autarchical policy of FIF. The Federal Championship was won by Juventus against Doria. However, Juventus didn't receive Spensley Cup because Milan (the former champions) refused to give the Cup to the new Champion, Juventus, giving it to Spensley and his team, Genoa. In November 1908, FIF decided to award permanently Spensley Cup to Milan. The Italian Championship 1908 and Coppa Buni were won by Pro Vercelli beating Juventus, Doria and US Milanese. However, only Pro Vercelli was later recognized as "Italian Champions 1908", forgetting the Federal Championship won by Juventus.
In 1909 season, too, two different championships were organised:
- Federal Championship, where also foreign players (if they live in Italy) are allowed to play; the Federal Champions win Coppa Oberti
- Italian Championship, where only Italian players are allowed to play; the Italian Champions win Coppa Buni
The Federal Championship was won by Pro Vercelli, beating in the Final US Milanese. The Italian Championship was won by Juventus, beating in the Final US Milanese. However, only Pro Vercelli was later recognized as "Italian Champions 1909", forgetting the Italian Championship won by Juventus.
The format was modified for the 1909–10 season which was played in a league format. Nine clubs participated playing each other both home and away. The split between Federal and Italian championship was not completely abolished, because, while unifying these tournaments, it was decided to assign to the end of the season two titles:
I Campionati Nazionali di calcio sono di I e II Categoria. Quello di I Categoria è suddiviso in Campionato Federale e Campionato Italiano. Al primo possono prendere parte anche giuocatori di nazionalità estera, residenti in Italia, il secondo è riservato esclusivamente ai giuocatori di nazionalità italiana.["There are two National Football Championships: Prima and Seconda Categoria. The Prima Categoria Championship is divided into Federal and Italian championship. In the first one foreign players living in Italy, too, are allowed to play, in the second one only players of Italian nationality are allowed to play. " (Article 2 of the Championship Rules promulgated the FIGC to Milan on August 8, 1909)]According to an article in the newspaper La Stampa dated December 24, 1909, at the end of the season will be "proclaimed Italian Champions the best placed club among pure italian teams and Federal Champions the best placed club among Spurious International Clubs". At the end of the season, Pro Vercelli and Inter placed both in the first place, so a playoff was needed in order to assign the Federal title (the Italian one was won by Pro Vercelli). This season was the first victory for Internazionale, who defeated Pro Vercelli in the final by a score of 10–3.
In the 1910–11 season, teams from Veneto and Emilia were admitted for the first time to the championship. The championship was divided in two groups: Liguria-Piemonte-Lombardia group, the most important one, and Veneto-Emilia group. The winners of each group qualified to the Final for the title. The 1912–13 season saw the competition nationalised with North and South divisions. The 1914–1915 Championship was suspended because of World War I while Genoa was placed in the first place in Northern Italy Finals and only when the war ended, in 1919, FIGC decided to award the 1915 title to Genoa. In 1916, Milan won the Coppa Federale, which for that season was a substitute for the championship, which had been suspended because of World War I. The tournament that year was limited to clubs from the north, with the exception of Pro Vercelli, but was not treated as an official trophy or recognised by FIGC as an Italian title.
Prima Divisione
Controversy hit the Championship in the 1921–22 season which saw the major clubs (including Pro Vercelli, Bologna and Juventus) in dispute with the FIGC. The best 24 teams had asked for a reduction in the number of clubs in the top division in accordance with a plan drawn up by Vittorio Pozzo, the Italian national team coach. Pozzo's plan was dismissed and the CCI (Italian: Confederazione Calcistica Italiana) was founded and organised a 1921–22 CCI league (Prima Divisione) to run concurrently with the 1921–22 season (Prima Categoria) organised by the FIGC. Therefore, that season saw two champions: Novese (FIGC) and Pro Vercelli (CCI). The schism ended when FIGC accepted to reduce the Northern Championship 1922–23 to only 36 clubs ("Compromesso Colombo/Colombo compromise"); from 1923–24 the Northern Championship was reduced to 24 clubs divided into two groups.
Divisione Nazionale
The Carta di Viareggio/Viareggio charter (1926) was drawn up to legalise professionalism, ban foreign players, and rationalise the championship creating a new national top league where Northern and Southern teams play in the same championship: Divisione Nazionale. To the new Championship were admitted 17 teams from Lega Nord (Northern League) and 3 teams from Lega Sud (Southern League) for a total of 20 teams, divided into two national groups of 10 teams each.
Further scandal followed in the 1926–27 season when title-winners Torino Football Club were stripped of their Scudetto following an FIGC investigation. A Torino official was found to have bribed opposing defender Luigi Allemandi in Torino's match against Juventus on 5 June 1927, and thus the season finished with no declared champions.
Serie A
In 1929 Divisione Nazionale (two groups of 16 teams each) split into two Championships: Divisione Nazionale Serie A (the new Top Division) and Divisione Nazionale Serie B (the new second level of Italian Football). The 1929–30 season was the inaugural Serie A season and was won by Internazionale (called Ambrosiana at the time). The next 11 years were also dominated by Juventus and Bologna, when all of the Scudetti were won between the three of them, Juventus winning five times in a row, a record only equalled by Grande Torino in 1948, by Internazionale in 2010 and Juventus itself in 2016. The competition was truncated as the Championship was suspended in 1943 due to World War II. A Championship was held in 1944, the Campionato Alta Italia, and won by Spezia. The title was not officially recognised by FIGC until 2002 and even then the Scudetto is considered a "decoration."
The post-war years were dominated by a Torino side known as Il Grande Torino ("The Great Torino"), a team which found a dramatic end in the Superga air disaster in 1949. The 1950s saw the gradual emergence of Milan, with the help of Swedish striker Gunnar Nordahl, who was Serie A's leading scorer (Italian: Capocannonieri) for five out of six seasons. Juventus began to dominate throughout the 1970s and early 1980s with nine Scudetti in fifteen seasons while the 1990s saw Milan come to prominence.
Serie A was dealt another blow by the 2006 Italian football scandal which involved alleged widespread match fixing implicating league champions Juventus, and other major teams including Milan, Fiorentina, Lazio, and Reggina. The FIGC ruled Juventus be stripped of their title, relegated to Serie B and start the following season with a nine-point deduction. The other clubs involved suffered similarly with relegation and points deduction.
Clubs
The following table lists the performance of each club describing winners of the Championship. 16 clubs have been champions.
Bold indicates clubs currently playing in the top division.