2004: how Napoli went bankrupt and restarted in Serie C1

Napoli was founded on 25 August 1926, on the initiative of Giorgio Ascarelli, as Associazione Calcio Napoli. The name came from the 1922 merger of the Naples Foot-Ball Club (founded 1905) and the Unione Sportiva Internazionale Napoli (founded 1911), renamed in Italian under pressure from the fascist regime's hostility to foreign terms. The emblem chosen in those years, the Corsiero del Sole (the horse-and-sun crest), still features in the club's imagery today. In 2026 Napoli mark a century since that foundation, with the club celebrating through a vintage centenary matchball and a film currently in production, which had its first day of shooting on 9 September.

That was when Aurelio De Laurentiis took over the sporting licence and entered the club in Serie C1 under the name Napoli Soccer, restarting from the third tier of Italian football, a world away from the Scudetti of the Corrado Ferlaino era and the UEFA Cup lifted in 1989. In 2006 the club reverted to the name SSC Napoli, closing the refoundation chapter and restoring the name it had carried since its birth eighty years earlier.

Since that Serie C1 campaign, Napoli have returned to Serie A, won two further Scudetti, in 2022-23 and 2024-25, and an Italian Super Cup in 2025. A hundred years after Ascarelli's foundation, that fall and that restart remain both the lowest chapter and the starting point of the club's recent history.