Juventus FC – rankings, club Elo rating and UEFA coefficient

Founded in 1897, Juventus FC is the most successful club in the history of Italian football, characterized by high consistency in performance over the decades. The Turin-based team has accumulated 36 official national league titles, placing it at the top of the all-time Serie A table with a clear lead over clubs like Inter Milan and AC Milan. The domestic record of the Turin side is complemented by 15 Coppa Italia trophies and 9 Italian Supercups. Over the years, the strength of the team has been shaped by outstanding players and managers, among whom Giampiero Boniperti, Alessandro Del Piero, as well as managers Giovanni Trapattoni and Marcello Lippi, made significant contributions to the club's statistics and identity.

The most prominent period of the team's dominance in the 21st century was a streak of nine consecutive league titles won between 2012 and 2020. During this era, Juventus FC built its tactics around exceptional defensive discipline, maintaining an average of fewer than 0.7 goals conceded per match in individual seasons. Key roles in organizing the team were played by managers Antonio Conte and Massimiliano Allegri, while the core of the defensive line consisted of goalkeeper Gianluigi Buffon alongside defenders Giorgio Chiellini, Leonardo Bonucci, and Andrea Barzagli. A major offensive boost in the later phase of this era was the signing of Cristiano Ronaldo, who finished his spell at the club with 101 goals in 134 official appearances.

On the international stage, the record of Juventus FC presents a more complex picture, marked by a high number of deep knockout runs alongside a lower conversion rate in finals. The club has lifted the European Cup twice (in 1985 and 1996), but has been defeated in the UEFA Champions League final seven times, which stands as the highest number in the history of the competition. In the modern context, the club is undergoing a squad and financial reconfiguration, aiming to optimize its wage budget while maintaining a steady presence in the top four of the Italian league and the knockout stages of UEFA competitions.

The Calciopoli scandal and Juventus: Italian football's darkest summer

In May 2006, as Italy prepared for the World Cup, Italian football was shaken by revelations that would change the sport in the country. The affair known as Calciopoli centred on wiretaps collected by prosecutors in Naples, which suggested that Luciano Moggi, general manager of Juventus, maintained an exclusive relationship with the men responsible for designating referees in Serie A, and used it to influence which officials would take charge of important matches.

The investigation was made public just as Juventus finished the 2005/06 season on top of the table. The federal justice system moved with striking speed. On 14 July 2006, the sporting tribunal ruled that Juventus should be relegated to Serie B for the first time in its history, stripped of its 2004/05 and 2005/06 titles, and excluded from the Champions League. Moggi was banned from football for five years, while AC Milan, Lazio and Fiorentina were also punished, though the clubs were treated differently from one another and several sanctions were later softened on appeal.

The point deduction imposed on Juventus for the 2006/07 season shrank as the case moved through the appeals system. It was 30 points at first, then 17, and finally 9 after an arbitration ruling in October 2006. The 2004/05 title was left unassigned, while the 2005/06 championship was awarded to Inter, who had finished third on the field.

The fallout was immediate. Several stars left the club, among them Zlatan Ibrahimović, Lilian Thuram and Patrick Vieira, but Alessandro Del Piero, Gianluigi Buffon, Pavel Nedvěd and David Trezeguet stayed. Under coach Didier Deschamps, Juventus won Serie B in 2006/07 with 94 points and returned to the top flight, where it later built the run of nine consecutive league titles that began in 2011/12.

The legal picture is more complicated than the sporting verdicts suggest. The criminal proceedings in Naples produced sentences against Moggi that were reduced on appeal and ultimately cancelled in 2015, when the charges lapsed under the statute of limitations. Yet the Court of Cassation described Moggi as the initiator of an illicit system influencing matches, and stated that his conduct was not confined to a single season. Later revelations about conversations involving officials of other clubs, Inter among them, fuelled a long-running debate about whether the sanctions were applied selectively. Juventus's attempts to have the revoked titles restored were rejected by the sporting authorities.

Whatever the verdict on fairness, Calciopoli left lasting marks. It prompted a rethink of how referees are appointed in Italy, ended the era in which a few powerful executives could dominate the game behind closed doors, and remains one of the defining episodes in the history of Italian football.