Talk:Serie D

Serie D
The revision of Differentgravy about this article contains lots of wrong things. First of all, Serie D is NOT the lowest level of Italian football, but, as the article correctly explained before, the highest of non-professional one. Second, it is written "Girone", not "Gerone" (I'm Italian, you can trust me). Third, the names of the teams are the official ones, not the common ones (e.g. nobody wonders to say "Modica Calcio s.r.l.", but just "Modica"). So, I'm setting the article back at the previous (perhaps work-in-progress, but quite correct) revision; for any doubt, you may contact me. Ciao. --Angelo.romano 01:02, 13 July 2005 (UTC)

Amateur or semi-professional?
I am not quite clear on this. Is this an all-amateur tier, or one in which there is a mixture of amateurs and professionals? The article seems to imply the former: "Serie D is the top level of Italian non-professional football and fifth level overall" But it:Campionato di calcio italiano seems to say the latter: "Il campionato è costituito da una serie maggiore (o prima divisione) detta Serie A e di altre tre serie minori (B, C1, C2), più una divisione ibrida semiprofessionistica (serie D)."

Could anyone clear this up, please? —Ian Spackman 20:44, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

With promotion and relegation, are you ever going to get a clean break? As I understand it, Serie C is entirely professional. Since Serie C teams are relegated to Serie D every year, there are presumably some professional teams in Serie D...my understanding was the "professional" tiers are all professional, but that the higher "amateur" tiers are bound to also include professional teams, due to the way promotion and relegation work. john k 11:55, 5 July 2006 (UTC)


 * According to what I know, serie D teams are all amateur, included the ones who relegated from Serie C: by the way, the league was called Campionato Nazionale Dilettanti, "amaeteur national league", until a few years ago. --Angelo 13:56, 5 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Does that mean that the same club is "professional" one year, and "amateur" the next? Isn't that defining "professional" to mean "team that plays in Serie C or higher" and "amateur" to mean "team that plays in Serie D or lower" without reference to the actual practices of said club? john k 17:32, 5 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Serie C teams are allowed to pay salaries to players such as every company does with its employees. Serie D (and lower division) teams are not allowed to do that, since they're all amateur clubs, and instead pay so-called "refunds of expenses" to their players. This is the Italian meaning of professionism in football. In practice, Serie D teams are used to pay very high refunds of expenses for its players, often a few lower than Serie C salaries, that's why it's often referred to as "semi-professionism". --Angelo 18:08, 5 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Ah, that makes sense, I suppose. So the "amateurs" in Serie D get paid nearly as much as the "professionals" in Serie C, then? john k 22:11, 5 July 2006 (UTC)


 * It depends of the team. If a team wanna win the Serie D, probably it would pay nearly Serie C salaries. --Angelo 00:03, 6 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Perhaps all this should be explicitly discussed in the article. (And it seems like "semiprofessional" would be a more or less accurate shorthand to describe the setup, even if it's officially an amateur competition. john k 17:46, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

(Returning to Level 1 before we disappear off the screen.) Thanks for those observations John and Angelo. What motivated my original question was that I had been editing the page for A.S. Casale Calcio, noticed that they had just been relegated to Serie D, and was wondering quite how significant that was. I am now much clearer, although the distinction between amateur and pro sport is much vaguer than it used to be. (Probably it always was!) At any rate it is clear that it is a big deal: apart from the loss of status, you have to take on some legal restructuring of the club and you’re likely to lose most of your squad. (For that last, of course, you may be rather grateful.)

Actually, as soon as I read John’s comment I began to edit the page in line with it, but then decided that the questions of promotion and relegation and the overall championship of Serie D could also do with clarifying. Having checked the articles in the Italian Wikipedia and looked at some other things I was about to press the save button when I became unconvinced by anything I had written! I’ll leave it overnight and see if there is anything worth retrieving. Meanwhile if anyone can explain the operation of ripescaggio (‘fishing out’)…! —Ian Spackman 20:09, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

History
Something has to be done with that 'history' paragraph. I have no idea what the writer is trying to say, so I have no idea how to edit that crap. AntropovNikki (talk) 04:09, 6 March 2008 (UTC)