Massimiliano Allegri had his calculator at hand once again in his pre-Genoa press conference, revealing his updated findings on points targets.
As La Gazzetta dello Sport report, Allegri set the quota he thinks will achieve the two main objectives in his presser: “The Champions League odds have risen to 74 points. The Scudetto odds, however, I believe are at 86-88.” Let’s try to understand: why did he say that? And are the sums correct?
The most interesting sentence, as always, is the one not explicitly stated, but between the lines. Allegri officially repeated the same old concepts about finishing in the top four, but he is clearly thinking about what is needed to win the league too.
To be clear: everyone at Milanello knows they’re in the race for the Scudetto, and their fixtures are focused on Inter and Napoli, not Roma, Juventus and Como. As for the numbers, let’s look at Allegri’s homework.
Scudetto pace
Inter are on 42 points after 18 games and will have to make up the 90 minutes against Lecce, postponed for the Supercoppa Italiana. That will happen on Wednesday. First, on Sunday evening, they have Inter-Napoli, which is a huge game.
The current projection is for Inter to have 89 points at the end of the season. If they win their next match, they would finish the first 19 matchdays with 45 and raise the projection to 90. In short, Allegri was optimistic with that 86-88 point estimate, and it makes sense.
Inter could have the Champions League to contend with this spring until April-May, which could make it hard to maintain the same pace. History suggests Allegri is right: in the last 21 years, since Serie A has had 20 teams, the Scudetto winner has averaged 88.6 points and has never dropped below 82.
Top four doubts
As for the Champions League quota, things get complicated. First of all, Italy qualified three teams up until 2017, four teams since then, and a whopping five in 2023-24. This is a variable to consider.
Allegri pessimistically sets the quota at 74, because Roma and Juventus, after 19 matches, are fourth and fifth with 36. If they doubled their points, they’d reach 72. The details are obviously impossible to predict but, when in doubt, it’s best to keep an eye on Como’s progress, on 33 with a game in hand.
What does history say? Over the last 20 years, excluding the 2005-06 season marked by the Calciopoli punishments, the Champions League quota has been 71.1 points. Milan are already at 38: they shouldn’t have any trouble getting there.
Pointless projections?
At this point, the math can step aside because football is a story of people, not numbers. Two seasons are rarely the same. Allegri certainly has 2024 on his mind, when his Juventus won only four games in 17 rounds in the second half of the season, before his traumatic post-Coppa Italia dismissal.
In the first half of the season, he had 46 points, a very high number. On the other hand, in 2015-16, with Juventus, he overcame that terrible start and took 52 points in the second leg, 13 more than in the first half of the season.
If he did the same again this time, he could already call the city hall and tell them that in May, an open-top bus must be allowed to pass through Piazza Duomo.
For me, it’s not worth getting hung up on Inter. If we find ourselves with a title shot, great, but a lot of underlying numbers suggest Inter should be well ahead already. Let’s not fall into the trap we did with Pioli by ignoring overall good results because Inter kept beating us.
Top four would be huge progress on last year and put us in a good position for the summer. That’s the target. Anything more is a bonus.
Well said bro
The scudetto would be easier this season than it should be… Look at the catastrophic injury situation that is holding back Napoli. Inter underperformed in the beginning (although are in a long winning streak now). Juve are miles behind already as is Bologna & Lazio. Only Roma could be a contender but I’m not convinced by them either.
It’s Inter or Milan now. Napoli will be back if they’ll get their stars back. The rest? Not scudetto-worthy. The 20th star is far easier to reach this season than is was supposed to be. Go for it!
Well said. We all hope but you said it all.
Well said
I completely agree. Step by step. CL qualification this season, next season will be the squad getting reacquainted with having to compete in Serie A and Europe at the same time, with likely an enlargement of the squad to handle that, and then I think in Allegri season 3 we can realistically set the title as a goal from the get go. Of course, any trophies won at any point would be fantastic.
I think what’s missing in these calculations is that this season is not typical. The spread of points at top is still quite low relative to most other typical seasons. That HAS to come into play. Until we see clear 2 or 3 teams in the Scudetto run then it’s still largely up for grabs imo. It’s probably why I wouldn’t say we’re in the title race as yet just from a pragmatic, risk averse perspective.
If in two rounds (give or take a round) Roma and Juve can be the top 2 teams and us Inter and Napoli vying for 4/5th spots then by and large the race is still wide open.and tell us something about the competition this year. And this is at almost the half way stage. I can’t recall the.league being so close with so many teams still in it in recent memory.
To add to that, Atalanta is now resurgent and Como has shaken off their rust (which is a testament to how good of a coach Fabregas is). It’s shaping up to be a heck of a season..let’s see what the UCL does to shake things up even more 🍿
Milan’s quality in depth is pretty thin. I’d focus on Top4 this season, get into CL, get that revenue and start reinforcing. Then let’s see how it plays out.