Italia
Serie BThe Serie A (Italian pronunciation: [ˈsɛːrje ˈa]), officially known as Serie A Enilive in Italy and Serie A Made in Italy abroad for sponsorship reasons, is a professional association football league in Italy and the highest level of the Italian football league system. Established in the 1929–30 season, it restructured the existing Italian Football Championship, which had been played since 1898, into a national round-robin format alongside Serie B.
It functions under a promotion and relegation system with Serie B.
The league was organised by the Direttorio Divisioni Superiori until 1943, the Lega Calcio from 1946 to 2010, and the Lega Serie A ever since. The 29 championships played from 1898 to the formation of the Serie A in 1929 are officially recognised by the Italian Football Federation (FIGC) as equal to later Serie A titles. Similarly the 1945–46 season, played under a temporary format due to World War II, is also recognized as an official championship. Since 1924, the winner of Italy's top division has worn the scudetto emblem on its kit in the following season, and since 1961, the Coppa Campioni d'Italia trophy has been awarded to the Serie A champion.
The Serie A currently ranks second in the UEFA coefficient rankings as of 2024–25 based on performances in European competitions over the past five seasons, behind England's Premier League and ahead of Spain's La Liga. The league has consistently ranked among the strongest in global football and has historically attracted top global talent, producing numerous Ballon d'Or winners.
The Serie A is home to several of football's most successful and renowned clubs, including Juventus, Inter Milan, and AC Milan. These teams have played key roles in European football governance and competition history. Juventus, the most decorated club in Italy, has achieved international success across all major UEFA and intercontinental tournaments. Milan and Inter have also earned significant honors, with Milan joint-third among clubs for most UEFA titles, and Inter achieving a continental treble in 2009–10. Alongside Roma, Lazio, historically Parma and Fiorentina but now replaced by Napoli and Atalanta, these clubs form the "seven sisters" (sette sorelle) of Italian football.
History
Founded in 1898, the Italian championship was initially characterized by amateur organization and limited public interest. During its first two decades, Genoa, the first team to win the Italian championship, and Pro Vercelli were the dominant clubs, winning most of the titles between them. The Italian Football Federation (FIGC) organized the championship from its first edition, except in the 1921–22 season. After the clubs failed to reach an agreement over the proposed progetto Pozzo, two separate tournaments were held, one of which was organized by the Italian Football Confederation (CCI). The following season, the Colombo Compromise ended the split and reunited the competitions.
Until the end of the 1920s, the Italian championship was organized through multiple geographically based groups followed by knockout stages. Since the introduction of the Scudetto patch in 1925, the championship has also commonly been referred to as the "Scudetto" by metonymy. From the 1929–30 season onward, the championship adopted a single round-robin format, which had already been briefly used in the 1909–10 season, and the name Serie A.
The 1930s marked a significant change in Italian football, both in sporting terms and in its social significance. The period saw the emergence of a sustained dominance by three major clubs, Juventus, Inter Milan, and AC Milan, with Juventus becoming the most successful club in Italy and Inter the only club to have remained continuously in the top flight. Football also attracted an increasingly large following among fans and the mass media, establishing itself as Italy's national sport and overtaking cycling.
The dominance of the Milan–Turin axis was periodically challenged during the interwar period and the postwar period by Bologna and Torino. In subsequent decades, clubs including Fiorentina, Lazio, Roma, and Napoli also won top-flight titles. Roma's 1941–42 championship was the first won by a club from Central or Southern Italy. Other clubs achieved isolated title successes, including Casale and Novese in the early 20th century, the latter during the split between the FIGC and CCI, and Cagliari, Verona, and Sampdoria in the second half of the 20th century.
Serie A experienced a period of decline following the decision by the Lega Nazionale Professionisti to restrict the signing of players and coaches from foreign leagues after the national team's defeat at the 1966 FIFA World Cup in England. The situation was further affected fourteen years later by the first major Italian football betting scandal. The decline continued into the early 1980s, when Italy's top division ranked 12th in Europe for the 1981–82 season, behind leagues such as those of Belgium, the Soviet Union, East Germany, and Czechoslovakia.
Serie A subsequently reached a peak in international prestige and visibility around the late 1980s and early 1990s. The high technical level of the teams was reinforced by the gradual reopening of the league to foreign players, while Italian clubs consistently achieved strong results in European competitions. In the 1989–90 season, Italian clubs won all three major European club competitions, and Serie A subsequently occupied first place in the continental rankings for several seasons. In the 1997–98 season, Serie A qualified a record nine teams for European competitions.
Serie A lost its position at the top of the continental rankings from the second half of the 2000s onward, amid structural problems affecting both sporting matters and off-field issues. It has nevertheless remained one of Europe's major domestic leagues, alongside those of Germany, England, and Spain.