Italian league - all odds on football in Italy
Italian Football
The Italian League has a traditional European league pyramid system that includes yearly promotion and relegation. There are currently 3 professional leagues in Italy, Serie A, Serie B and Serie C with A being the highest and C the lowest.
The national cup competition of Italy is called the Coppa Italia and there is also the Supercoppa which is the traditional season curtain raiser between the winners of Serie A and the Coppa Italia.
Serie A and Serie B - Promotion and Relegation Between
There are currently 20 teams that compete in Serie A and every year the bottom 3 in the table are relegated to Serie B.
The top 2 in Serie B are automatically promoted but the 3rd promotion spot is somewhat more complicated than other leagues. If the 3rd placed team is more than 10 points clear of 4th they will gain automatic promotion, but if they are not it will go to a playoff system. The playoffs can feature anywhere between 2 and 6 teams, depending on how many are withing the 14-point playoff margin of second.
There are 4 teams relegated to Serie C in a similar format to the promotion criteria. The bottom 3 get automatically relegated and the 4th bottom team join them if they 5 or more points behind the 5th bottom team. If they are within this margin, they go to a 2-legged, 2 team playout to determine which one of them gets relegated.
European Qualification
Thanks to Italy’s 4th placed rankings in the UEFA coefficient rankings, the top 4 teams in Serie A automatically qualify for the group stage of the Champions League and there are also 3 spots in the Europa League available.
There are officially spots in the Europa League group stages available for the team that finishes 5th and the team that wins the Coppa Italia. However, if the Coppa Italia is won by a team already in the top 5 the spot will go to the 6th placed team in the league.
The 3rd Europa League spot sees the qualifies team enter the early qualifying rounds, in which they have to come through multiple ties before they even make it to the group stages. Similarly, this will go to 6th or 7th place in the league depending on the winners of the Coppa Italia.
Coppa Italia
The Coppa Italia sees all 78 teams from Serie A right down to Serie D take place in a knockout format. Courtesy of their higher league positions, teams from the top two divisions enter the tournament at a later stage.
Juventus hold the record for most Coppa Italia wins with 13 which is currently well clear of the next best Roma who have 9.
Serie A
Serie A has been dominated in recent years by Juventus who have won 9 in a row and hold the record for total titles with a stunning 36. Second and third place are taken jointly by the two Milan clubs, AC and Internazionale who are tied on 18 each.