The first live match shown was a 3–3 draw between Sampdoria and Lazio on 6 September 1992, attracting three million UK viewers.

Gazzetta Football Italia, a highlights show, became the highest-rated Saturday morning program in Channel 4's history at the time, with around 800,000 viewers a week in its first season, 1992–93.

Italy's Serie A contained many of the world's best players, with its clubs paying spectacularly high transfer fees.

Veteran broadcaster Kenneth Wolstenholme linked off screen, and Peter Brackley and Paul Elliott commentated.

Gascoigne hosted the first few episodes, but didn't always turn up when he was supposed to film, and he was soon replaced by James Richardson, a producer who had not worked in front of the camera previously.

[2] Richardson became the host of the series's main two programmes: the live weekly Sunday afternoon match titled Football Italia, commentated on by Brackley (or sometimes Gary Bloom), and Gazzetta Football Italia on Saturday mornings, which contained the highlights of the previous week's matches and a piece on Italian culture.

[1] A regular part of Gazzetta had Richardson explaining football stories from Italian newspapers, as he sat in the sunshine outside a café.

During the last series, which was broadcast in the early hours of the morning, Richardson sat at a café outside the Pantheon, usually in front of a large ice cream or dessert, and a proportion of each course would vanish between each set of match highlights.

Other contributors to the series included Don Howe,[11] Luther Blissett,[8][12] Ray Wilkins and Joe Jordan.

[17] Channel 4 also covered some Italian international matches live, including Italy's 1998 World Cup qualifying playoffs against Russia,[18] which finished 2–1 on aggregate.

The most telling sign came when Channel 4 abandoned coverage of the 2001 title decider with seven minutes remaining, the match having been disrupted by a pitch invasion by fans of Roma.

[20] Just twelve months earlier, Channel 4 had accommodated schedule changes, when a rainstorm held up Juventus's unsuccessful 1999–2000 title bid.

[27][28] The show thus returned to terrestrial television and live games were shown weekly at 1:30pm UK time on Sundays,[29] as the original series on Channel 4.

The first game shown was a 1–1 draw between Inter Milan and Udinese on Sunday 26 August 2007, with Tony Jones and John Barnes as the commentators.

The message, posted by James Sugure, read: "Unfortunately, it is now unlikely that Five will be continuing their Football Italiano television coverage of Serie A for the 2008–09 season.

"[3] Italian football was absent from British TV for the 2008–09 season, other than live coverage of the Milan derby on BBC Three.

Ultimately, the series' popularity fell, as Italian football slipped behind first Spanish and then English in the UEFA Coefficients and the perceived level of quality.

The sound clip is of Italian television football commentator José Altafini, a Brazilian who played in Serie A for AC Milan, Napoli and Juventus.

After Channel 4 lost the rights to Serie A coverage in 2002, Taylor took full ownership,[citation needed] launching JDT Sports Productions and the website Football-Italia.net,[34] which also included the magazine of the same name.