Serie A History

From 1898 to 1928 an Italian League, divided into regional groups was the format used to determine the best football teams in the country. In the 1929-1930 season the organizations that ruled the regional tournaments were unified to form one single national championship.

As from the 1924/25 season, a club that wins the Italian Serie A receives the right to wear the Scudetto – a type of coat of arms with the Italian colors, green, white and red – on the their shirt for the following season to show that they are the title holders. Juventus of Turin is the club with the most number of Serie A titles with 27 followed by AC Milan with 17, Inter Milan with 15, Genoa with 9, Torino, Bologna and Pro Vercelli – currently in Lega Pro Seconda Divisione, former Serie C2, with 7 titles each.

In May of 1949 a tragedy marked the history of the Italian Serie A when the airplane transporting the entire Torino FC squad, 4 time league champions, crashed into the hill where the Basilica Superga – a church near Turin - is located.

All the 31 people onboard were killed including the 18 Torino players, club officials, journalists and the airline crew. The team was returning from Protugal where they played a friendly match against Benfica and with only four matches left to concluding the season Torino was forced to play with his youth team. In respect to the tragedy all their opponents also used their youth players against Torino and the young ones were able to carry on the club’s lead in the competition and with the title. After Roma’s 200-2001 scudetto, Juventus, AC Milan and Inter Milan have dominated Serie A in the recent years. Juventus won in 2001-2002 and 2002-2003, AC Milan 2003-2004 and Inter Milan won the last two seasons of the Serie A. The late Umberto Agnelli, one of the most influential entrepreneurs and politicians in Italy, introduced in 1958 the Golden Star for Sports Excellence to be a recognition to the clubs that win multiple championships. In Italy the Golden Star is added to a teams crest when the club wins ten scudettos. Currently only three clubs in the Italian Serie A have this honour: Inter Milan, 1 star (15 scudettos); AC Milan 1 star (17 scudettos); Juventus 2 stars (27 scudettos).