Football Italia is an Italian football programme in the United Kingdom, which as of August 2007 is currently known as Football Italiano. The first broadcasting of the show was in 1992 on Channel 4, the show is centered around live coverage of Serie A football, the top flight in the Italian league system. James Richardson presented the show for a large part of its existence.
The first live match shown was between Sampdoria and Lazio, it ended in a 3–3 draw and drew 3 million viewers. In August 2005 the programme moved to Bravo, where it only showed one season and a half with the rest featuring on Setanta Sports.
Currently Five own the rights to showing the programme, meaning Italian football has returned to terrestrial in the United Kingdom for the first time in five years. This is also currently the only one of the top four European Leagues to be shown live on terrestrial TV in a major European market. 26 August 2007 was the exact return date of the show, and the show will be broadcast weekly from 1:30pm Sunday afternoon GMT.
