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The Serie A (Italian pronunciation:[ˈsɛːrjeˈa][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]
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][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][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]
== For most of Serie A's history, there were 16 or 18 clubs competing at the top level. Since 2004–05, however, there have been 20 clubs in total. One season (1947–48) was played with 21 teams for political reasons, following post-war tensions with Yugoslavia. Below is a complete record of how many teams played in each season throughout the league's history;
18 clubs: 1929–1934
16 clubs: 1934–1943
20 clubs: 1946–1947
21 clubs: 1947–1948
20 clubs: 1948–1952
18 clubs: 1952–1967
16 clubs: 1967–1988
18 clubs: 1988–2004
20 clubs: 2004–present Scudetto patch During the season, which runs from August to May, each club plays each of the other teams twice; once at home and once away, totalling 38 games for each team by the end of the season. Thus, in Italian football a true round-robin format is used. In the first half of the season, called the andata, each team plays once against each league opponent, for a total of 19 games. In the second half of the season, called the ritorno, the teams play another 19 games, once more against each opponent, in which home and away matches are reversed. The two halves of the season had exactly the same order of fixtures until the 2021–22 season, when an asymmetrical calendar was introduced, following the format of the English, Spanish, and French leagues.[29] Since the 1994–95 season, teams are awarded three points for a win, one point for a draw, and no points for a loss. Prior to this, teams were awarded two points for a win, one for a draw, and none for a loss. The three lowest-placed teams at the end of the season are relegated to Serie B, and three Serie B teams are promoted to replace them for the next season. ==
As of 2022, Serie A is ranked as the fourth-best league by UEFA coefficient, therefore the top four teams in the Serie A qualify straight to the UEFA Champions League group stage. The team finishing fifth, along with the Coppa Italia winner (if the Coppa Italia winner finishes outside the top five) or the team finishing sixth (if the Coppa Italia winner finishes inside the top five), qualify for the UEFA Europa League group stage. The sixth or the seventh ranked club, depending on the Coppa Italia winner's league performance, joins the final qualification round of the UEFA Europa Conference League.
== If after all 38 games there are two teams tied on points for first place or for 17th, the last safety spot, the team that wins the scudetto or stay up at 17th is decided by a single-legged play-off game of 90 minutes and penalties (no extra time), to be held at a neutral venue.[30][31][32] If at least three teams are tied for one of those spots, then the two teams to play in the match is decided by a mini table between the teams involved using the tiebreakers below. For a tie in any other position the deciding tie-breakers are as follows:
Play-off game at a neutral venue if relevant to decide European qualification or relegation; otherwise by coin flip[33] Between 2006–07 and 2021–22, the tiebreakers currently used for all places to decide the scudetto winner if necessary, though this was never needed. Prior to 2005–06, a play-off would immediately be used if teams were tied for first place, a European qualification spot, or a relegation spot. In some past years, the playoff was a single game at a neutral site while in others it was a two-legged tie decided by aggregate score. A playoff game has never been needed since the tiebreaking format changed. The only time a playoff was used to decide the champion occurred in the 1963–64 season when Bologna and Inter both finished on 54 points. Bologna won the playoff 2–0 at the Stadio Olimpico in Rome to win the scudetto.[33] Playoff games were used on multiple occasions to decide European competition qualifications (most recently in 1999–2000) and relegation (most recently in 2004–05). ==
Before 1929, many clubs competed in the top level of Italian football as the earlier rounds were competed up to 1922 on a regional basis then interregional up to 1929. Below is a list of Serie A clubs who have competed in the competition since it has been a league format (68 in total).
^Sixth most successful European club for confederation and FIFA competitions won with eleven titles. Sixth most successful club in Europe for confederation club competition titles won (11), cf. "Confermato: I più titolati al mondo!" (in Italian). A.C. Milan S.p.A. official website. 30 May 2013. Retrieved 19 June 2013."Confermato: I più titolati al mondo!" (in Italian). A.C. Milan S.p.A. official website. 30 May 2013. Retrieved 19 June 2013.
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