Serie C1 was the third highest

football Football is a family of team sports that involve, to varying degrees, kick (football), kicking a football (ball), ball to score a goal (sports), goal. Unqualified, football (word), the word ''football'' generally means the form of football t ...

league in

Italy Italy, officially the Italian Republic, is a country in Southern Europe, Southern and Western Europe, Western Europe. It consists of Italian Peninsula, a peninsula that extends into the Mediterranean Sea, with the Alps on its northern land b ...

. It consisted of 36 teams, divided geographically into two divisions.

History

Before the 1978–79 season, there were only three professional football leagues in Italy, the third being

Serie C The Serie C (), officially known as Serie C NOW for sponsorship purposes, is the third-highest division in the Italian football league system after the Serie B and Serie A. The Lega Italiana Calcio Professionistico (Lega Pro) is the governing ...

. The league menaging the C was also organizing the semi-professional

Serie D The Serie D () is the highest level of semi-professional football in Italy, and the fourth tier of the Italian national league system. It sits beneath the third and lowest fully professional league, Serie C, and feeds in to it through promotion ...

. In 1978, it was decided to split the Serie C into Serie C1 (the third highest league) and Serie C2, moving the remnants of the Serie D to the amatorial sector as Campionato Interregionale. Upon its inception in 1978–79, Serie C1 consisted of two groups of 18 teams, with two promotions and four relegations. During the season, teams only played the other teams in their division, according to the round robin method. Play-offs were introduced in 1992, together with the 3-victory-points rule. In each division, two teams were promoted to

Serie B The Serie B (), officially known as Serie BKT for sponsorship reasons, is the second-highest division in the Italian football league system after the Serie A. It has been operating for over ninety years since the 1929–30 season. It had b ...

, and three teams were relegated to

Serie C2 Serie C2 was the fourth highest football league in Italy, the lowest with a professional status. History Before the 1978–79 season, there were only three professional football leagues in Italy, the third being Serie C. The league menaging t ...

. In total, the league promoted 4 teams to Serie B and relegated 6 teams to C2. The team finishing first in the regular season was directly promoted to

, while teams placing 2nd to 5th were entered into a play-off semi-final for the chance of gaining the second promotional spot for that particular division. From 2000, the overall champions were decided through the Supercoppa di Serie C. From 2008 the competition was known as ''Lega Pro Prima Divisione''. The reform decided by the FIGC led to the reunification with the Serie C2 starting from 2014-2015 and with the subsequent rebirth of the third division championship with 60 teams divided into three groups of 20 as

Past champions

Source for league winners: Group A Group B

Lega Pro Prima Divisione

Group A Group B

References

External links

Lega Pro current season tables, fixtures and results at SoccerwayLega Pro Official Website

Lega Pro at data sport.it
{{UEFA third leagues 1 Professional sports leagues in Italy 1978 establishments in Italy Sports leagues established in 1978 2014 disestablishments in Italy Sports leagues disestablished in 2014 Defunct football leagues in Italy It