1909 Italian Football Championship


The 1909 Italian Football Championship was the 12th Italian Football Championship and the sixth since re-branding to Prima Categoria. Again the contest was made up of clubs exclusively from the 3 Northern Italian regions of Liguria, Lombardy and Piedmont. In the second of two highly political consecutive seasons of Italian football, two championships of Prima Categoria were played; one exclusively with Italian players and a competition, that included non-Italians. However, political manoeuvring by the clubs with foreign players meant that this season, the competition with foreign players was ultimately deemed more important. Hence the 1909 Italian Football Championship is officially recognised as won by Pro Vercelli who won the competition that included non-Italian players. That is despite that the previous season they are also recognised as champions, having won the competition that year that featured only Italian players.
The number of entrants in what is now viewed as the main contest doubled from the previous year to eight.

The two championships

In this season, as in the previous one, two championships of Prima Categoria were played:
  1. Italian Championship, the second edition of the tournament in which only Italian players were allowed to play; the winners would be proclaimed Campioni Italiani. The winner was Juventus. They won as a prize the Coppa Buni.
  2. Federal Championship, the first tournament where foreign players were also allowed to play; the winners would be proclaimed Campioni Federali The winner was U.S. [Pro Vercelli Calcio|Pro Vercelli]. They won as a prize the Coppa Oberti.
However, the "spurious international teams", adversing the autarchical policy of the FIF, withdrew from Italian Championship. That was to make the Federal competition the most important of the two. Further, Pro Vercelli's all Italian squad won the Federal Championship against teams that featured non-Italian players. Italian Championship winners, Juventus, were soon eliminated from the Federal Championship. This de-valued the Italian Championship into a meaningless tournament. The dissenters' strategy worked; the failure of the Italian Championship won by Juventus forced the Federation to later recognise the Federal Champions of Pro Vercelli as "Campioni d'Italia 1909", disavowing the other tournament.

Federal Championship

Qualifications

Lombardy

;Classification
;Results

Piedmont

Round 1
Round 2

Veneto

was the only registered team.

Italian Championship