How a tight title race turned into a procession for Inter

For a while this season, Serie A refused to behave.

Autumn was chaos. Napoli looked like champions again, Milan had their moments, Juventus lingered with menace, and Inter – well, Inter were somewhere in the noise, not above it. Three games in, they were 11th, already wobbling, already prompting the kind of early-season overreactions that Italian football does better than anyone.

This was not supposed to be a procession. It was supposed to be a fight.

And then, slowly, Inter removed everyone else from the equation.

The numbers behind Inter Milan's Serie A title

The shift did not come with a bang but with accumulation. Wins stacked on top of wins, performances began to resemble control rather than chaos, and by November, the table had started to bend in their direction. A victory over Lazio nudged them top – briefly, almost tentatively – but it mattered because it was the first time since the opening day that they looked like a team comfortable being there.

From that point on, the race began to change shape.

By the numbers, Inter’s dominance is stark. They have won 26 of 35 league games, scoring 82 goals and conceding just 31 – the best attack and one of the meanest defences in the division. Their 21st title was secured with three matches to spare, a 12-point gap rendering the final weeks a formality rather than a finale.

But numbers only tell you what happened, not how it felt. And for much of the winter, it felt like inevitability creeping in.

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How Cristian Chivu streamlined Inter

This is where Cristian Chivu deserves his due. Appointed in the summer after the turbulence of the previous campaign, he did not overhaul Inter so much as clarify them. The pressing became sharper, the structure cleaner, the roles more obvious. Inter did not play radically different football – they just played it better, more consistently, more ruthlessly.

At the centre of it all was a familiar axis. Lautaro Martinez, Serie A’s top scorer with 16 goals, remained the reference point, while Marcus Thuram provided both chaos and cutting edge alongside him with 13 of his own. Behind them, Hakan Calhanoglu added goals from midfield, while Nicolo Barella and Henrikh Mkhitaryan ensured that Inter’s control extended beyond the final third. Plus wing-back Federico Dimarco set a new record for the most assists in a Serie A season, with 18 and counting.

It is tempting to reduce title wins to attacking numbers, but Inter’s real strength lies in their balance. Alessandro Bastoni marshalled a defence that rarely lost its shape, while the collective discipline ensured they conceded less than a goal per game.

This was not flair winning the league. It was control. And yet, even processions have their stumbles.

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What wobble?

March threatened to complicate things. A derby defeat to Milan, combined with a handful of less-than-convincing results, allowed the chasing pack to glimpse something resembling hope. Napoli, in particular, lingered within touching distance long enough to keep the narrative alive.

Then came the wobble’s end – and with it, the title race itself.

Inter’s response was not cautious. It was emphatic. A chaotic comeback win over Como in April – the kind of game champions so often win and challengers so often don’t – effectively snapped whatever tension remained. The gap stretched, belief drained from their rivals, and the run-in became a countdown rather than a contest.

By the time Parma arrived at San Siro, the script was already written. Thuram scored, Mkhitaryan sealed it, and Inter were champions again – 82 points, 12 clear, the job done with time to spare.

What makes this season remarkable is not just that Inter won, but how the context changed around them. This was, for a while, a crowded, competitive race. Napoli were defending champions. Milan had pedigree. Juventus had persistence. And yet, one by one, they faded – through inconsistency, injuries, or simple inability to match Inter’s relentlessness.

Inter did not need a dramatic surge to pull away. They just needed to keep going.

And that is the quiet truth of this title. It did not feel inevitable at the start. It barely felt likely. But as the weeks passed, as the wins accumulated, as the table stretched, inevitability took hold.

A tight race became a procession not because everyone else collapsed at once, but because Inter never really did.

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