Eleven points. That was the final margin when Inter beat Parma 2-0 at home on 3 May to seal a 21st Scudetto โ the exact opposite of how the previous season had ended, when 81 points still wasn't enough to catch Napoli by a single point. This time Simone Inzaghi's side left nothing to chance. But the number that actually defines the season isn't Inter's margin, it's Lautaro Martinez winning the capocannoniere with just 17 goals โ the lowest total to top Serie A's scoring charts in over twenty years. And the story nobody predicted in August: Como finished fourth and reached the Champions League for the first time in the club's history.
What one point had done to Inter
2024/25 had come down to the slimmest possible margin โ Napoli's 82 points under Antonio Conte, one ahead of Inter's 81. That season also gave us Mateo Retegui's 25-goal capocannoniere at Atalanta, Moise Kean's career-best year at Fiorentina, and a Napoli defence built around Romelu Lukaku that conceded just 27, the best of any champion in a decade. Inter went into 2025/26 carrying the memory of a season where being genuinely excellent still wasn't enough.
How Inter made this one look routine
Not through reinvention โ through addition. The defensive structure Inzaghi had spent four seasons building stayed the foundation: under 35 goals conceded across 38 matches, 24 wins, an 81-point near-miss converted into an 11-point cruise. John Stones, arriving on a free transfer from Manchester City, brought Champions League composure to a back line that hardly needed it. Hakan Calhanoglu still set the tempo through midfield, and Marcus Thuram alongside Lautaro gave Inter two forwards capable of finishing from almost any angle.
A Golden Boot that tells its own story
17 goals won Lautaro the capocannoniere โ the lowest winning total since Serie A returned to a 20-team format back in 2004/05, and nobody in that era had claimed the award with fewer than 20 before this. That's not a mark against Lautaro's season, it's a sign of how evenly the goals were spread across the league: Retegui managed 15 for Atalanta, Lukaku 13 for Napoli, and nobody built the kind of run that usually decides these things. This was Lautaro's second capocannoniere, after 24 goals in a very different Inter setup back in 2023/24, and it settles the argument that he's the most complete centre-forward in Italy right now.
Como's season shouldn't have been possible this soon
Promoted to Serie A only in 2023, Como spent two seasons quietly building before this one. Under Dennis Bergkamp as technical director, the emphasis on structure and pressing produced the division's best defence outside the champions โ just 29 goals conceded all season. Fourth place, and Champions League football for the very first time in the club's entire history. It's the kind of jump that invites comparisons to Montpellier winning Ligue 1 or Brentford reaching the Premier League's top half โ a club with no history at this level about to play there anyway, and the rest of Europe genuinely curious what Bergkamp's project looks like on that stage.
The rest of the European places
Napoli finished second, 11 points back, in a steady if unspectacular season under Conte's successor. Roma took third and Champions League qualification alongside Inter, Como and Napoli โ the first time four Italian clubs had all reached the competition in consecutive seasons under the newer format. AC Milan's fifth place brought Europa League football alongside Juventus, while Atalanta, in sixth after a long run of Champions League involvement, dropped to the Conference League.
Three relegations, one theme: newly promoted sides finding the level too high
Cremonese went straight back to Serie B in their first season back up. Hellas Verona, who'd survived several difficult campaigns through the 2020s, finally couldn't find the consistency to stay up. Pisa's first top-flight appearance in decades ran into a level of quality they couldn't match at either end of the pitch. Combined, the three relegated sides managed 63 points between them across 38 games each.
The numbers worth remembering
- Lautaro's 17-goal capocannoniere is the lowest winning total since the 20-team format began in 2004/05.
- Como's 29 goals conceded is the best defensive record by any non-champion in Serie A in the last decade.
- Como reaching the Champions League ranks among the most surprising European debuts by any major-league club since at least the 2010s.
- Inter's 11-point margin arrived exactly one year after losing the title by a single point โ one of the sharpest turnarounds in modern Serie A history.
- John Stones is among the first England internationals to play in Serie A in decades.
- All four of Serie A's top sides conceded under 40 goals each โ the most defensively competitive top four the league has produced in years.
What I'd watch for in 2026/27
Inter remain favourites โ Opta had them around a 35% chance of a third Scudetto in four seasons โ but there's a real ageing concern in that squad, and not enough young depth has come in behind it yet. Roma and Como now have to juggle Champions League football for the first time, which tends to disrupt domestic form more than clubs expect going in. Juventus strengthened seriously, bringing in Randal Kolo Muani, Jhon Lucumi, Guglielmo Vicario and Zeki Celik, and AC Milan under Ruben Amorim broke their transfer record for Goncalo Ramos โ the clearest sign yet of an actual title rebuild. This is the most open the Serie A race has looked since before 2024/25.
If Italian football has you hooked
FootballDream doesn't run a Serie A-specific fantasy game, but the instincts that make a season like this worth following apply directly to our Premier League games โ a weekly Fantasy XI with a price-based budget at /teams, match-result calls in the Predictor at /predictor, daily footballer-guessing in FootballQuest at /footballquest, the multi-league Quiz at /quiz, or season-long Player Draft and Team Draft against friends. All free, no entry fee, no downloads.