Juventus were also deducted 30 points from their total for next season and stripped of their last two league titles.

Lazio and Fiorentina were also relegated to Serie B and penalised seven points and 12 points respectively.

All three have been banned from European competition.

AC Milan will stay in Serie A but will lose 15 points and will also be kicked out of the Champions League.

The decisions were handed out just five days after Italy won the World Cup with a penalty shoot-out victory over France in Berlin.

The teams will have three days to appeal before a federal court of arbitration and a final decision will be given by July 24.

Juventus president Giovanni Cobolli Gigli said he was stunned by the decision and that the club will appeal.

"It's incredible," he said. "We were expecting a fairer sentence. We don't understand how we can be excluded from the championship.

"Juve is the only team which has clearly shown a desire to change. To be in Serie B with a 30-point deduction is absolutely unacceptable."

Friday's judgements could be good news for Inter Milan, Roma, Chievo and Palermo, who finished third, fifth and seventh and eighth last season.

They will be expected to be the teams taking part in this season's Champions League.

The scandal broke after transcripts of former Juve general manager Luciano Moggi, telling the head of Italy's refereeing commission what officials he wanted appointed to specific games, were published in the Italian media.

As well as the four clubs, 26 individuals were on trial for sporting fraud.

The tribunal handed Moggi and Juve's former chief executive Antonio Giraudo five-year suspensions from all sporting activities; Adrian Galliani, the AC Milan vice-president, was banned for one year while Andrea Della Valle, the Fiorentina president, was suspended for four years.

Diego Della Valle, the honorary president of Fiorentina, also suffered a four-year ban and a 30,000 euro fine.

Lazio president Claudio Lotito was banned for three years and six months and fined 40,000 euros.

"I am not bitter for myself, but for the teams implicated and for their supporters," said Moggi on Friday.

"No match was fixed, no referees were favoured. It is why Juventus and the other clubs, but especially the fans, are frustrated by this sentence."

Despite calls from some for the clubs to be granted an amnesty as a result of Italy's World Cup success - 13 of the national squad belong to the four teams implicated - Italian football federation (FIGC) commissioner Guido Rossi dismissed the idea.

If appeals are launched, the FIGC wants them finalised by July 25, the deadline for the names of the clubs to be submitted to UEFA to enter the Champions League and UEFA Cup next season.

The verdicts on Friday were handed down by a disciplinary panel made up of five retired judges.

The scandal will lead to a mass exodus of top players from the three relegated clubs.

"I don't know if I'm going to stay with Juventus," said Azzuri goalkeeper Gianluigi Buffon before Sunday's World Cup final.

AC Milan midfielder Gennaro Gattuso said: "Giving an amnesty to the guilty parties in this scandal would be unfair and disappointing to millions of fans awaiting these sentences."

Faced with the damning evidence of hours of criminal investigators' wiretaps implicating key figures, the clubs' lawyers argued that the transcripts were misinterpreted or taken out of context.

Former Italian football federation official Paolo Bergamo, who had responsibility for referee selection, for instance, is overheard telling a match official: "Try to be on the right wave length."

Absent, however, from the tribunal was Moggi, who was overheard telling Pierluigi Pairetto, the head of the Italian referees' association, which match officials he wanted assigned to certain league and European games.

Moggi's lawyer Paolo Trofino reiterated demands last week that he could not be tried as he had resigned from the club.

He said the transcripts were worthless in light of the massive number of phone calls -- 420 to 430 per day -- made by "the man with a thousand contacts" among journalists, officials and politicians.

"In total, one could estimate at 100,000 the telephone calls made by my client during that season. And you know how many conversations the police have used to come to their conclusions? They have used 40," he said.

"His innocence is contained in the other 99,960 phone calls that have not been put forward."