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Juventus
Juventus Football Club (BIT: JUVE) (from Latin iuventus: youth, commonly referred to as simply Juventus or Juve, is a football club based in Turin, Italy. With the exception of one season, the club has spent its entire history in the top flight of Italian football, where it plays in the Serie A today.
Juventus is the most successful team in the history of Italian football. Overall, the club have won 51 official trophies, more than any other Italian team; 40 in Italy, which is also a record, and 11 in European and world competitions. The Old Lady is the third most successful club in Europe and the sixth in the world with the most international titles officially recognised by one of the six continental football confederations and FIFA.
The club was the first Italian and Southern European side to have won the UEFA Cup.In 1985, Juventus, the only team in the world to have won all official international cups and championships (which includes all official European competitions and the Intercontinental Champions Clubs' Cup),became the first club in the history of European football to have won all three major UEFA competitions.
In Italy, Juventus is the club which has the biggest fan base,having also one of the largest numbers of supporters in the world, with a total of 170 million Juventus's tifosi worldwide. The club is a founding member of the European Club Association, which was formed after the dissolution of the G-14, a collection of Europe's most elite clubs.
At present, the bianconeri play their home games at the Stadio Olimpico di Torino while the stadium which the club actually owns, Stadio delle Alpi is undergoing long-term structural changes and will not be completed for use until 2011.
Juventus Supporters and Rivalries
Juventus is the most well supported football club in Italy with over 11 million fans (28% of Italian football fans), according to an August 2007 research by Italian newspaper La Repubblica, as well as one of the most supported football clubs in the world, with approximately 170 million supporters (43 million of them in Europe alone),particularly in the Mediterranean countries, to which many Italians have emigrated.
Despite this strong support, attendances at Juventus home matches average about 22,000, much less than many other highly renowned European teams. Contrastingly, demand for Juventus tickets in occasional home games held away from Turin is high; suggesting that Juventus have stronger support in other parts of the country. Juve is widely and especially popular throughout mainland Southern Italy and Sicily, leading the team to have one of the largest followings in its away matches,more than in Turin itself.
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Juventus ultras have good relationships with Piacenza, ADO Den Haag and Legia Warsaw fans and have several rivalries, three of which are highly significant. The first is with local club Torino, they compete in the Derby della Mole (Derby of Torino) together; this rivalry dates back to 1906 when Torino was founded by former Juve members. The other most significant rivalry is with Internazionale; matches between Juventus and Inter are referred to as the Derby d'Italia (Derby of Italy). Up until the 2006 Serie A match-fixing scandal, which saw Juventus relegated, the two were the only Italian clubs to have never played below Serie A. Notably the two sides are the first and the third most supported clubs in Italy and the rivalry has intensified since the later part of the 1990s; reaching its' highest levels ever post-Calciopoli, with the return of Juventus to Serie A. They also have a rivalry with F.C. Fiorentina
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