Italian Serie A club Juventus celebrate 126th anniversary

By Doga Kirmizioglu

ANKARA (AA) — Juventus, the record-breaking club of the Italian Serie A, are celebrating their 126th anniversary.

Juventus was founded by students of the Massimo d'Azeglio High School in Turin for sports activities on Nov. 1, 1897, and became a football club two years later.

The club is named after the Latin word "juven-tus" which means "youth."

- Record holders of Italian football

Juventus has won the most national tournaments and holds 36 league championships, 14 Italian Cups, and nine Italian Super Cup victories. They also won several prestigious trophies in Europe.

They won the UEFA Champions League twice (1984-1985, 1995-1996), the European Cup Winners' Cup once (1983-1984), and the UEFA Cup (rebranded the Europa League in 2009) three times (1976-1977, 1989-1990, and 1992-1993).

They also bagged the UEFA Super Cup twice (1984, 1996), the Intertoto Cup once (1999), and the Intercontinental Cup (1985, 1996) between European and South American clubs.

The Bianconeri, which also hold the Italian league record with nine consecutive championships in Serie A between 2012 and 2020, have once again become contenders this season.

They began the season under the helm of Italian coach Massimiliano Allegri, who had previously won five championships for them, and have collected 23 points with seven wins, two draws, and a defeat in 10 weeks of the league.

With players such as Dusan Vlahovic, Federico Chiesa, Arkadiusz Milik, Adrien Rabiot, and Moise Kean in their squad, are in the second spot in Serie A standings, two points behind the leaders Inter Milan.

- Several football legends played for Juventus

Italian midfielder Alessandro Del Piero, who played for Juventus in 1993-2012, has the most appearances in the club's history with 705 matches.

Del Piero performed impressively in many tournaments throughout these years, including six league and one UEFA Champions League victory, netting 290 goals and becoming the top scorer in the club's history.

Gianluigi Buffon, considered one of the top goalkeepers in football history, played for Juventus in 2001-2018. He defended the goal for the Bianconeri in 685 matches.

Buffon ended his professional football career with Parma in August, having been awarded five times as the world's best goalkeeper by the International Federation of Football History & Statistics (IFFHS).

Italian defender Giorgio Chiellini, who joined Juventus in 2004 and moved to Los Angeles FC from Juventus in 2022, and Leonardo Bonucci, who moved from the Bianconeri to Union Berlin at the beginning of this season, are more of the club's legends.

Portuguese star Cristiano Ronaldo also scored 101 goals in 134 matches for Juventus, where he played in 2018-2021.

Several players who left their mark on football history, such as Dino Zoff, Antonio Conte, Marco Tardelli, Pavel Nedved, David Trezeguet, Zinedine Zidane, Michel Platini, Roberto Baggio, Didier Deschamps, and Andrea Pirlo, also played for Juventus.

- 'Calciopoli' scandal

Juventus was stripped of their 2004-2005 and 2005-2006 Serie A championships and relegated to Serie B with a point penalty due to the involvement of their managers in the "Calciopoli" match-fixing scandal that broke out in Italian football in 2006.

It took almost five years for the Bianconeri to overcome this trauma.

The Turin club rejoined Serie A in the 2007-2008 season but couldn't bag any titles until 2011-2012, which marked the beginning of their historic nine-title streak.

*Writing by Selcuk Bugra Gokalp