Serie A enjoyed a golden period of European success in the late 1980s and 1990s, when Italian clubs such as AC Milan, Juventus and Inter Milan regularly reached and won the European Cup and, later, the Champions League, and the league was widely regarded as the strongest in the world.
Since then, Italian clubs have had to compete against Premier League and La Liga rivals with significantly larger broadcast revenues, making sustained continental dominance harder to repeat. Even so, Italian clubs have continued to reach major European finals in the decades since, and Serie A’s history of past success remains a central reference point whenever its clubs return to the later stages of European competition.