History
The first leagues were started by English immigrants in the 1890s in Italy. The first club was Genoa Cricket and Athletic Club (now Genoa Cricket & Football Club). Initially there were separate leagues for Italians and foreigners, they merged around 1897. In March 1898, the Italian Football Federation (Federazione Italiana del Football, later re-called Federazione Italiana Giuoco Calcio, FIGC) was set up in Turin. With four clubs joining - Genoa, FC Torinese, Internazionale di Torino and the Società Ginnastica di Torino (Gymnastic Society of Torino). Other clubs existed but decided not to join. The first championship took place on a single day, May 8, 1898 in Torino. The title was won by Genoa.
FIGC joined FIFA in 1905 and the championship moved to a league structure, based on regions, in the same year.
After the interruption of World War I, football popularity grew and more and smaller clubs joined. In the summer of 1921, a second association was briefly created in competition with the FIGC: the Confederazione Calcistica Italiana (CCI), emerged from an argument between major and minor clubs over the structure of the national leagues. Hence in 1922 Italy had two champions US Pro Vercelli and US Novese. The two groups eventually re-merged at the end of the season.
The move to a single national league structure occurred in 1929 with initially eighteen teams in the top league. The first winners in 1930 were Internazionale. The national team also won the World Cup in 1934 and 1938.
After World War II the league returned to a regional structure with a north-south divide and a play-off for a single year before returning to a national league. Torino were the first post-war league champions and went on to win four in a row. However, it is Juventus, Milan and Internazionale that have dominated the league since World War II, having won the title in 47 of the 64 seasons.
The current league system dates back to 1978, when semi-professional sector was disbanded. In that year, the current Lega Pro (then known as National Semiprofessional League) which ruled Serie C and Serie D, turned in a fully professional league organizing new Serie C1 and Serie C2. Italy so became the only country having two distinct professional football leagues, 14 years before England.
Read more about this topic: Association Football League System In Italy
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“It would be naive to think that peace and justice can be achieved easily. No set of rules or study of history will automatically resolve the problems.... However, with faith and perseverance,... complex problems in the past have been resolved in our search for justice and peace. They can be resolved in the future, provided, of course, that we can think of five new ways to measure the height of a tall building by using a barometer.”
—Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter, Jr.)
“What is most interesting and valuable in it, however, is not the materials for the history of Pontiac, or Braddock, or the Northwest, which it furnishes; not the annals of the country, but the natural facts, or perennials, which are ever without date. When out of history the truth shall be extracted, it will have shed its dates like withered leaves.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“In the history of the United States, there is no continuity at all. You can cut through it anywhere and nothing on this side of the cut has anything to do with anything on the other side.”
—Henry Brooks Adams (1838–1918)