List of Italian football champions


The Italian football champions 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 36 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.
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.

History

Campionato Italiano di Football

The first official national football tournament was organised in 1898 by the Italian Football Federation. 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 was structured into regional groups with the winners of each group participating in a playoff with the eventual winners being declared champions. Since 1904, the championship was called Prima Categoria.

Prima Categoria

In November 1907, the FIF organised two championships in the same season:
  1. Italian Championship, the main tournament where only Italian players were allowed to play; the winners would be proclaimed Campioni d'Italia and would be awarded the Coppa Buni
  2. Federal Championship, a secondary tournament where foreign players were also allowed to play; the winners would be proclaimed Campioni Federali and would be awarded the Coppa Spensley
The FIF wanted to organize two different championships in order to allow weaker clubs composed only of Italian players to win the national title, and to relegate simultaneously the big clubs composed mostly of stronger foreign players in a minor competition for a "consolation prize". The majority of big clubs withdrew from both the championships in order to protest against the autarchical policy of the FIF. The Federal Championship was won by Juventus against Doria, while The Italian Championship 1908 and Coppa Buni were won by Pro Vercelli, beating Juventus, Doria and US Milanese. However, the Federal Championship won by Juventus was later forgotten by FIGC, due to the boycott made by the dissident clubs.
In 1909 season, the two different championships were organised again, with Coppa Oberti in lieu of Coppa Spensley for the Federal Championship. This time, the majority of big clubs decide to only withdraw from Italian Championship in order to make the Federal competition the most relevant tournament, and to diminish the Italian one. The Federal Championship was won by Pro Vercelli, beating US Milanese in the Final, while the Italian Championship was won by Juventus, again beating US Milanese in the Final. However, the dissenters' strategy worked out: the failure of the Italian Championship won by Juventus forced FIGC to later recognized the Federal Champions of Pro Vercelli as "Campioni d'Italia 1909", disavowing the other tournament.
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 for the last time to assign two titles at the end of the season, Infact, FIGC established that would be proclaimed Federal Champions the first placed club in the general classification, while it would be recognized as Italian Champions the best placed club among the four "pure Italian teams", depending on the head-to-head matches. 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. This season was the first victory for Internazionale, who defeated Pro Vercelli in the final by a score of 10–3. Even the Italian title won by Pro Vercelli was later forgotten.
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 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 was founded and organised a 1921–22 CCI league to run concurrently with the 1921–22 season organised by the FIGC. Therefore, that season saw two champions: Novese and Pro Vercelli. The schism ended when FIGC accepted to reduce the Northern Championship 1922–23 to only 36 clubs ; from 1923–24 the Northern Championship was reduced to 24 clubs divided into two groups.

Divisione Nazionale

The Carta di Viareggio/Viareggio charter was drawn up to legalise professionalism, ban foreign players, and rationalise the championship creating a new national top league where Northern and Southern teams would play in the same championship: Divisione Nazionale. 17 teams from Lega Nord were admitted to the new Championship along with 3 teams from Lega Sud 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 split into two Championships: Divisione Nazionale Serie A and Divisione Nazionale Serie B. The 1929–30 season was the inaugural Serie A season and was won by Internazionale. 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 equalled by Grande Torino in 1949, by Internazionale in 2010, and Juventus itself in 2016, until they won again the next season in 2017 to overtake the record at six league titles in a row. 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, 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 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.

Campionato Italiano di Football

Prima Categoria

Prima Divisione

Divisione Nazionale

Serie A

Performances

Clubs

The following table lists the performance of each club describing winners of the Championship. Sixteen different clubs have been champions.
ClubChampionsWinning seasons
Juventus
36
1905, 1925–26, 1930–31, 1931–32, 1932–33, 1933–34, 1934–35, 1949–50, 1951–52, 1957–58, 1959–60, 1960–61, 1966–67, 1971–72, 1972–73, 1974–75, 1976–77, 1977–78, 1980–81, 1981–82, 1983–84, 1985–86, 1994–95, 1996–97, 1997–98, 2001–02, 2002–03, 2011–12, 2012–13, 2013–14, 2014–15, 2015–16, 2016–17, 2017–18, 2018–19, 2019–20
Milan
18
1901, 1906, 1907, 1950–51, 1954–55, 1956–57, 1958–59, 1961–62, 1967–68, 1978–79, 1987–88, 1991–92, 1992–93, 1993–94, 1995–96, 1998–99, 2003–04, 2010–11
Internazionale
18
1909–10, 1919–20, 1929–30, 1937–38, 1939–40, 1952–53, 1953–54, 1962–63, 1964–65, 1965–66, 1970–71, 1979–80, 1988–89, 2005–06, 2006–07, 2007–08, 2008–09, 2009–10
Genoa
9
1898, 1899, 1900, 1902, 1903, 1904, 1914–15, 1922–23, 1923–24
Torino
7
1927–28, 1942–43, 1945–46, 1946–47, 1947–48, 1948–49, 1975–76
Bologna
7
1924–25, 1928–29, 1935–36, 1936–37, 1938–39, 1940–41, 1963–64
Pro Vercelli
7
1908, 1909, 1910–11, 1911–12, 1912–13, 1920–21, 1921–22
Roma
3
1941–42, 1982–83, 2000–01
Lazio
2
1973–74, 1999–2000
Napoli
2
1986–87, 1989–90
Fiorentina
2
1955–56, 1968–69
Sampdoria
1
1990–91
Hellas Verona
1
1984–85
Cagliari
1
1969–70
Novese
1
1921–22
Casale
1
1913–14

Bold indicates clubs currently playing in the top division.

By city

CityChampionshipsClubs
Turin
43
Juventus, Torino,
Milan
36
Milan, Internazionale
Genoa
10
Genoa, Sampdoria
Bologna
7
Bologna
Vercelli
7
Pro Vercelli
Rome
5
Roma, Lazio
Florence
2
Fiorentina
Naples
2
Napoli
Cagliari
1
Cagliari
Casale Monferrato
1
Casale
Novi Ligure
1
Novese
Verona
1
Hellas Verona

By region