Five Teams, Five Points: Why This Scudetto Race Feels Different

The final hours of an explosive 2025. From Napoli’s fourth league title to Inter’s loss to PSG in the Champions League final, and the national team’s attempt to qualify for the next World Cup, it was a year of highs and lows. In short, the highs and lows of a year that laid the foundations for an explosive Serie A title race in 2026.

What History Says About Leading Serie A at Christmas

And this is no cliché. It’s hard to think of a league table situation like the current one.  With only two games left before the halfway point. Five teams are within five points of each other, although Juventus and Roma have played one game more. But how often has the team at the top of the table at the end of the year gone on to win the league title?

The team at the top of the league table at the end of the calendar year often goes on to win the Scudetto. In 89 historical cases, the ‘winter champion’ won the title 60 times, demonstrating a strong trend, albeit not an absolute certainty. There have only been four upsets on the last day in the last 20 years. The majority of winter champions go on to win the league title, around 67% of the time. There have been some great comebacks, but relatively few compared to the total number of seasons.

Some historical examples are:

• 1999/2000 season: Lazio overtook Juventus on the last day.
• In the 2001/2002 season, Juventus overtook Inter on the last day. Juventus overtook Inter on the last day (‘5 May’).
• In the 2004/2005 season: Juventus won, but the title was revoked due to Calciopoli.

Becoming winter champions provides an advantage and a confidence boost. So far, out of a total of 89 cases, the winter champions have gone on to win the Serie A title 60 times. That equates to 67.42% of the time. The same happened in the last championship: Napoli were both winter champions and Italian champions.

So are their pursuers doomed? Out of a total of 89 cases, the winner was the team that finished as winter runners-up 21 times. That equates to 23.6% of the total.

How Rare Comebacks Keep Serie A Title Race Alive

The last team to achieve this was Milan in 2021–22: in January, they were second behind Inter, but in May, they were crowned Italian champions, finishing ahead of the Nerazzurri.

The picture is completed by eight instances in which the Scudetto was won by a team that was not in first or second place at the end of the first half of the season. That equates to 8.99%.

The last time this occurred was in the 2002/03 season, when Lippi’s Juventus were in fourth place at the halfway point, behind Milan, Lazio, and Inter. They went on to win the Scudetto.

Inter and the Weight of Precedent When Being First Isn’t Enough

Inter have finished the first half of the season in first place on 17 occasions, winning the Scudetto on 10 of those occasions (Opta data). However, the last time they failed to confirm their position was in the 2021-22 season, when they were overtaken by Milan in the second half of the season. But, in the last championship they won, in 2020/21, the Nerazzurri finished second in the first half of the season, behind Milan. Of the 89 editions analysed, only two winter champions did not finish in the top three at the end of the championship: Juventus in 1935/36 and Liguria in 1938/39.