One point. That's what separated Napoli's 82 from Inter Milan's 81 across 38 matches โ the tightest Serie A title race in years, and a strange one to have finished the way it did, given where Napoli had started twelve months earlier: tenth place, a title defence gone completely wrong. Antonio Conte arrived that summer to fix it. What he built instead was one of the most complete single-season turnarounds Italian football has seen โ champions again, and just 27 goals conceded along the way.
Where Napoli were coming from
It's worth remembering how far Inter's dominance had felt the season before. They'd wrapped up 2023/24 with five games to spare, beating AC Milan in the Derby della Madonnina to confirm it, and Lautaro Martinez had taken the capocannoniere alongside the title โ a combination few Inter players had managed in decades. Napoli's own 2023/24, by contrast, had been a genuine disaster: tenth place, a year removed from being champions themselves, proof of how fast things unravel without the right manager. Conte's appointment that summer wasn't a gamble so much as a statement of intent.
What Conte actually changed
One non-negotiable: control over how the squad played. He got it, and built a Napoli that shifted between a 3-4-2-1 and a 3-5-2 depending on the opponent, with defensive compactness coming before everything else. The number that tells you it worked: 27 goals conceded in 38 games, against Inter's 43. Romelu Lukaku, brought in specifically for this system, scored 14 and gave the whole structure a focal point up front. The Tuesday film sessions, the refusal to let training standards slip, became their own recurring story in the Italian press all season. When Napoli finally clinched it with a 2-0 win over Cagliari at the Maradona on 23 May, it was the club's fourth Scudetto โ and only the second the stadium itself had witnessed under that name.
Inter's season, in one dropped result
Eighty-one points and nothing to show for it is a genuinely brutal way to end a season, and it's exactly what happened to Simone Inzaghi's side โ 24 wins, 9 draws, 5 losses, matching Napoli in almost every metric except the one that decides anything. Marcus Thuram scored 14 and kept proving himself one of the most complete forwards in Europe; Lautaro, the reigning MVP, was quieter in front of goal but still the heartbeat of the attack. The moment that lingers is the 4-4 draw with Juventus at San Siro in October โ Inter led twice and couldn't hold either lead. Turn either of those two points into a win, and Inter are champions by a single point instead of runners-up by one. That's how fine the margin actually was.
Retegui's breakout, and Atalanta's bigger point
25 goals in 36 appearances, and the capocannoniere award to go with it โ Mateo Retegui, who'd arrived from Genoa the summer before, turned into the best finisher in Italy under Gian Piero Gasperini. A four-goal game against Hellas Verona was the individual high point of the entire Serie A season, but the bigger story is Atalanta themselves: third place, 74 points, back in the Champions League, with Ademola Lookman's 15 goals giving them a genuine second attacking threat. Keep Gasperini and keep Retegui, and Atalanta are a real title contender the following year.
The goals nobody expected
Moise Kean's move from Juventus to Fiorentina came with plenty of scepticism attached, given his career to that point โ instead he had the best season of his career, 19 league goals, sixth on the club's all-time single-season list, and enough physical presence to help drag Fiorentina into fifth and a European place. Riccardo Orsolini's 15 for Bologna was a reminder that Serie A's scoring talent doesn't start and end with the traditional big clubs, and Artem Dovbyk's 12 for Roma in his first Italian season suggested the signing was a sound one, Roma's defensive troubles notwithstanding.
The rest of the European picture
Juventus took the fourth Champions League spot on 70 points, built more on consistency than excitement โ 16 draws in 38 games says everything about how hard they were to beat and how rarely they thrilled anyone doing it. Roma took the Europa League place on 69 points despite a season of managerial uncertainty, and Fiorentina rounded out the European places in the Conference League. Empoli, Venezia and Monza all went down, each fighting survival for most of the campaign.
A few numbers worth holding onto
- Napoli became only the fourth Italian club to win two Scudetti within three seasons of each other, alongside Juventus, Inter and AC Milan.
- Inter's 81 points is the highest tally by any Serie A runner-up in the modern era.
- Retegui, born in Argentina and eligible for Italy through his grandfather, is the first naturalised Italian to win the capocannoniere since the 1980s.
- The October 2024 Inter-Juventus 4-4 was the first eight-goal draw between the two clubs since 1961.
- Atalanta reached the Champions League for the fourth time in six seasons under Gasperini.
- Napoli's 27 goals conceded is the lowest total by any Serie A title winner in the last decade.
What actually happened the following season
Inter won their 21st Scudetto with three games to spare on 3 May 2026, finishing 11 points clear of Napoli. Lautaro Martinez took a second consecutive capocannoniere, though his 17 goals were the lowest winning total since the 20-team era began in 2004. Como finished fourth and reached the Champions League for the first time in the club's history. Full detail in the 2025/26 Serie A Season Review.
If Italian football has you hooked
FootballDream doesn't run a Serie A-specific fantasy game, but the same instincts that make Conte's rebuild interesting apply directly to our Premier League games โ a weekly Fantasy XI at /teams, match-result calls in the Predictor at /predictor, daily footballer-guessing in FootballQuest at /footballquest, the multi-competition Quiz at /quiz, or season-long Player Draft and Team Draft against friends. All free, no downloads.