7 WORST Title Defences of All Time

From Serie A champions Napoli this season to First Division winners Leeds United in the inaugural 1992-93 Premier League season, HITC Sevens takes a look at some of the worst title defences in the history of football.

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[AblemanSy]

The extraordinary thing about France not scoring a goal in 2002 is they had the top scorer of the Premier League (Henry), the top scorer of Serie A (Trezeguet) and the top scorer of Ligue 1 (Cissé) in their squad.

[JPL]

Never expected that clickbait thumbnail

[lucaslonchampt]

An unusual clickbaity thumbnail for once I see Alfie

[calculator]

no adu gag? this must be the darkest day in the HITC Sevens channel history

[TheJonBob]

The title of this video gave me an idea for a different video, 7 worst defenses that won titles.

[thatsjunkie]

Nürnberg are probably the most cursed club in Germany. Other than the relegation after the title, they were also relegated in 2008, after finishing 6th and winning the DFB-Pokal in 2007 and were also the 'victims' of the Bundesliga's most famous relegation thriller in 1999 when they were going into the last match at 12th place, 3 points and 5 goals ahead of the relegation zone (16th place) and still went down.

[rianmulcahy]

0:24 “Newly promoted Stuttgart” very disappointing to see this misinformation from Alfie. Thought he was better

[sreeradhmuch]

I expected "Without further Adu, who didn't end up on this list since his only title win at DC united surprisingly didnt end up in a particularly poor defense after a 3rd place finish"

[OYVIND]

SK Brann winning the league in 1962 and 1963. They were favorites to win the league in 64, but got relegated in the final game of the season, after losing 1-0 at home to the team at the bottom of the table - Raufoss.

Brann did not win the league again until 2007, and has despite being the only top-level team from the 2nd largest city in Norway - and having the most dedicated supporters in Norway, only won the league three times in the clubs 116 year history.

I also recommend making a video on their 2014 and 2021 season. Utter chaos. The latter one being dubbed "The most perfect catastrophic storm of a season in football history" by the renowned Swedish football podcast When We Were Kings who made a 4 hour long episode about the season. No sporting director, only 2 centrebacks at the start of the season, horrendous signings, coach sackings, nachspiel-scandals, sacking of players, and the most insane relegation-play-off match. It is hard to describe in one message. Contact me if you would like more information.

[ezraezra]

Big mistakes in this video:
1.Napoli went for champions to got relegated in video thumbnail, while they finished 10th this season.
2.Stuttgart had almost got relegated the last season. They won the playoffs to stay.

Honorable mentions:
1.Greece crashing out in Euro 2008 without point and only scored once, 4 years after their historic triumph in Portugal.
2.Hellas Verona finishing 10th in 1985-86 Serie A, after their historic win. They were even so close on getting relegated due to the Serie A only having 16 teams at that time.
3.Algeria suffered a humiliating exit in 2021 AFCON without a win and scoring once, having just won 2019 AFCON and 2021 Arab Cup and even maintained a long unbeaten streak in international football, at the same time as Italy and Argentina.
4.Last, but not least, PSIS Semarang. This one is from my country, Indonesia. If you don't know, unlike the other leagues around the world, the professional football leagues in my country had actually started in 1994-95, with the creation of Indonesian Football League (commonly known as Liga Indonesia). In addition, the competitions format often changed every seasons, either using the regular round-robin with the play-offs being held after the regular season had been ended or simply the full regular season with only round-robin (the current season of Liga Indonesia or Liga 1 had its new play-offs known as Championship Series, with teams finishing Top 4 qualified to this stage). However, there's only one case where a team has been relegated after winning the league in my country, and that was this club from Central Java. They won the league back in 1998-99, which was delayed because of the country's political and economical situation relating to May 1998 riots, but when the new season had began in 1999-2000, the club suffered its bad form and eventually got relegated at the end of regular season. According to the Wikipedia page of the 1999-2000 Indonesian Football League (in Bahasa Indonesia), PSIS were sitting on 13rd of the East Zone out of 14 teams from this group, with only 24 points.
Additionally, most of the former league winners in my country were struggling to recover after being relegated from the top-tier of Indonesian Football League, such as Persipura (Jayapura) and Sriwijaya FC (Palembang), who had enjoyed a big success in the past and are now in lower tier of Indonesian Football (Liga 2).

Edit: Actually, there are other 2 Indonesian clubs who suffered an immediate relegation after winning the championship: Petrokimia Putra in 2003 and Persebaya Surabaya in 2005. The latter was relegated as a special punishment for not taking a part in the playoffs.
I would also note that Bhayangkara Presisi FC got relegated from this season's Liga 1, having previously won the championship back in 2017, though it doesn't count for this trait.

[electronotch]

Honourable mention to Aston Villa, following up their last English League title in 1981 by finishing 11th despite winning the European Cup.

[Evemeister]

Strong candidates when even Leicester City 2016-17 doesn't make the final shortlist.

[hugohugolfson]

I instantly knew that my club, THE Club (Nürnberg), would be featured in this list. Sometimes it feels a bit of a burden to be a fan of such an infamous club... but I console myself that it resembles life really close: it's a constant struggle and most of the time you lose but you still keep on going.

[benedict]

Losing Spalleti and Kim killed Napoli

[Utterlyderanged]

River Plate won the 2008 Clausura, only to be last place the next season, we could have been relegated if argentina had a normal competition instead of the promedios

[joachimhovgaardramlau]

0:28 Stuttgart was also in the Bundesliga last season

[thomasfrost]

During this video I thought about Fenerbahce getting 99 points and not winning the league. How about a video for the very best seasons by sides not to win their domestic league? Villa in 1930/31 scoring 128 goals, which I think is still an English top flight record, but not winning the league is one that sprung to mind.

[notieming]

An interesting video would be the lowest scoring champions of all time.
I often think about this because I know Swedish champions in 1998, AIK scored 25 goals in 26 games which I think is insane.

[joachimhovgaardramlau]

Day 2: 7 harshes manager sackings of all time

[nathanb]

Stuttgart were relegation playoffs last season, but they survived. So they weren’t newly promoted