Italian football competition
Football tournament
The Supercoppa Italiana (English: Italian Super Cup) is an annual super cup tournament in Italian football.
Founded in 1988 as a two-team competition, it has featured four teams from the 2023 edition onwards: the winners and runners-up of the previous season's Serie A and Coppa Italia. Up until 2023, it was a match contested by the winners of the Serie A and the Coppa Italia in the previous season. If the same team won both the Serie A and Coppa Italia titles in the previous season, the Supercoppa was contested by the Serie A winner and the Coppa Italia runner-up, in essence becoming a rematch of the previous year's Coppa Italia final.
Originally, it was scheduled in the summer as a curtain-raiser to the new season, played at the home stadium of the Serie A champions. Since 2018, the competition has been scheduled during the winter months and takes place mainly outside Italy. Juventus is the most successful club with nine titles. The most frequent Supercoppa match-up has been Juventus against Lazio, occurring on five occasions.
History
Inaugurated in 1988, 18 of the first 21 Supercoppa Italiana contested were played at the home of the Serie A winners, the exceptions being in 1993 and 2003, when it was held in the United States cities of Washington, D.C., and East Rutherford, New Jersey, and in 2002 when the game was played in the Libyan capital Tripoli. Since 2009, nine of the fourteen venues chosen have been outside of Italy.
Of the 36 finals played to date, the venues have been as follows:
- Twenty times at the home of the Serie A winners;
- Four times in China and Saudi Arabia;
- Twice in the United States;
- Twice in Doha, Qatar;
- Twice at the Stadio Olimpico in Rome as Coppa Italia finalist's home ground under agreement between the contestants;
- Once in Tripoli, Libya;
- Once at the Mapei Stadium – Città del Tricolore in Reggio Emilia acting as a "neutral venue" (where it was not the home ground of the Serie A winners).
Since the game was first established, the Serie A scudetto and Coppa Italia have been won by the same team eight times, thus making the Coppa Italia runners-up the second participant in the subsequent Supercoppa. This occurred in the following years: 1995, 2015, 2016, 2017 and 2018 (Juventus), 2000 (Lazio), 2006 and 2010 (Internazionale).
On 23 December 2016, Milan became the first Coppa Italia runners-up to win the Supercoppa Italiana, after defeating Juventus on penalties.[1]
In 2018, Serie A signed a deal with the General Sports Authority that would see Saudi Arabia host three of the next five Supercoppa Italiana.[2]
On 13 March 2023, Lega Serie A approved a new format for the Supercoppa Italiana, starting with the 2023 edition. It is played as a four-team tournament, contested by the winners and runners-up of the previous season's Serie A and Coppa Italia.[3]
2023 Supercoppa Italiana.jpg)
