October 6 - Serie A Kicks Off

MODERN football originated in Britain but over the years the game has been exported to every corner of the globe.

Some countries have taken to it rather better than others and today we are looking at one that has taken the game and made it their own more than any other: Italy.

There is some debate about where football started in Italy with Genoa and Turin both staking claims to have been the first spot in the country to play the game.

Either way, it all started in the 1880s when English ex-pats introduced the sport to the Italians, and it soon took off in a big way. By the end of the century it was gaining popularity fast so the Italian Football Federation (Federazione Italiana Giuoco Calcio, FIGC) was set up and the first official tournaments organised.

Football clubs were springing up all over the country and soon the FIGC had organised them all to compete in regional leagues but in true Italian style, a row was to throw a spanner in the works. Before the 1921 season could start many of the leading clubs wanted a reduction in the number of teams competing in the top leagues. The FIGC would not agree and so a new organisation, the Confederazione Calcistica Italiana (CCI) was formed who set up their own rival league that ran concurrently to the FIGC league for the 1921-22 season and had Juventus, Milan and Bologna among its member teams.

After just one season of the two rival leagues, the FIGC conceeded to the big clubs’ demands and the CCI league was discontinued, but again, true to Italian form, more scandal and controversy was not far away.

Of course the Calciopoli scandal of 2006 was not Italy’s first foray into corruption as in 1927 a FIGC investigation found that a Torino official had bribed the Juventus defender Luigi Allemandi. Torino were stripped of the title and their was no official league winner for that season.

With all this match-fixing, rival associations and leagues and general uncertainty, the FIGC decided to rationalise competition and restructure the regional competitions into two national leagues: Serie A and Serie B.

It was on this day in 1929 that the first matches in the new Serie A national league were played. The pick of the results from the first day of the competition include a 3-2 win for Juventus over Napoli, a 3-0 win for Lazio over Bologna, and Internazionale beating Livorno 2-1 away.

Inter built on that win and went on to win the first ever Serie A championship, the first of 16 Scudetto’s the club would pick up including last year’s.

From beginnings of rows, scandals and disorganisation Serie A went from strength to strength to become one of the top professional leagues in the world.

It is home to some of the world’s most famous and successful clubs, and has played host to the best players in the world, evidenced by the fact that more players have won the Ballon d’Or award while playing at a Serie A club than any other league in the world.

For many English football fans, Serie A and Italian football will always be held in high regard thanks to Channel Four’s excellent Football Italia show fronted by James Richardson during the 1990s. When it started in 1992 the Sky revolution had yet to really transform English football into the super-rich and glamorous competition it is today and the Italian game was superior in quality, had bigger superstar players, and was just much cooler.

In those days there was no argument as to whether the Premiership was the best league in the world, it wasn’t even close, with Serie A the undisputed top cat, and it all started on this day.

Have a look at some footage from Football Italia of James Richardson with hair(!) with help from a pretty random celebrity pundit.

We will be back tomorrow, but in the meantime treat yourself to reading what else happened on this day when a certain former England captain was dragging his country singlehandedly to the World Cup.

Other Football Videos

(1 votes, average: 4 out of 5)

 Loading ...