Format
Italy’s Serie A is made up of 20 teams. The team with the most points after 38 matches wins the Scudetto (title). Teams play eachother twice, home and away in a round-robin format.Matches are played every weekend throughout the season, except when there is a break for international fixtures.
Two games are usually played on a Saturday evening, with one early kick-off and another late kick-off. The rest of the matches are played in the middle of Sunday afternoon, and there is also an evening game. There are midweek fixtures at intermittent periods throughout the season, with nine matches generally played on Wednesday evening and the remaining fixture on the Thursday.
In the first half of the season, called the andata, teams play eachother once, totalling 19 matches. In the second half of the season, called the ritorno, they play eachother once again, in the exact same order, with the home and away situations switched.
The Points System
Three points are awarded for a victory, one for a draw and none for a defeat.If two teams are level on points, their head-to-head record comes into play. If goal difference is still the same after this, overall goal difference from all fixtures and then goals scored are used to separate them.
When more that two teams are sharing the same number of points, the points accumulated in the matches between the teams are used to rank them, then goal difference if required. If this is not sufficient, goal difference over the entire season is used, and then goals scored. Further tie-breakers are seldom required beyond that.
The League Table
The champions and runners-up enter the Champions League automatically. The third-placed team must get through the Champions League third qualifying round before entering the group stages.The teams who finish in fourth and fifth place go into the Europa League. The sixth-placed team can also go into the tournament, but only if the two Italian Cup finalists have secured European soccer for the following season. This is because the winner of this competition is entitled to a Europa League place, but if they have already qualified for Europe, it goes to the runner-up.
Staying Up
The bottom three clubs in Serie A are relegated to Serie B– the division below. These clubs are replaced by the three top ranked teams at the end of the Serie B season.Forty points is generally enough to keep a team in the league.
