Serie A matchday 5 fixtures September 20 2026 - what each of the five remaining matches changes

Exactly one of the five Serie A matches left in this round can change the top four, and it is Frosinone against Como. Exactly one can change the bottom three, and it is Parma against Genoa. Those five fixtures involve precisely the ten clubs that have played four matches, so when Monday's two are done all twenty are on five and the match in hand that has been lifting one club's ceiling above another's is gone. That last part happens whatever the results.

Every number here is computed as of the September 20 update, with the round still in progress. The last results in the table are from Sunday, when Roma drew 2-2 with Inter and Lazio won 2-0 at Venezia. Forty five matches have been played. The eight fixtures named below are the ones the feed lists as upcoming, and none of them is treated here as played.

Frosinone hosts Como. A Como win takes Como to 13 points, level with Roma, Inter and Lazio, and pushes Cagliari out of fourth place. Cagliari has 12 points and does not play this round, so a Como win is the only way any club enters or leaves the top four before October. A Frosinone win instead takes Frosinone to 10, level with Como on points and clear of Milan, and a draw leaves Como on 11 and still a point behind Cagliari.

Como is also the only club in action carrying a clinch number, 101 of the 102 points left on its schedule. The guarantee needs 111 points, the fourth-highest total any rival can still reach, and Como clears it only because the match in hand lifts its own ceiling to 112. None of the other nine gets near that. Milan tops out at 110, Frosinone and Juventus at 109, Napoli, Atalanta and Lecce at 108, Fiorentina at 105, and Parma and Genoa at 103. That is why the clinch column is blank beside their names.

Parma hosts Genoa, the only fixture of the five that touches the relegation places. Both clubs have one point from four matches and neither has won. The winner goes to 4 points, level with Udinese, Torino and Monza, and out of the bottom three, and Bologna, on 2 points from five, drops into it. A draw puts both on 2 as well, and then Bologna stays seventeenth on goal difference, because Parma is on minus four and Genoa on minus six.

Fiorentina hosts Napoli. A Napoli win takes Napoli to 9 points, and no club currently below it can match that this round except Atalanta and Lecce, who would each have to win on Monday. A Fiorentina win takes Fiorentina to 6, level with Atalanta and Lecce and clear of the three clubs on 4, which is the largest climb available to anyone in the bottom five this week. Fiorentina has three points from four matches and a goal difference of minus six, level with Genoa as the worst of the ten clubs in action.

Milan hosts Lecce, one of Monday's two matches. Milan is one of five clubs still unbeaten and the only one of the five with fewer than three wins, two wins and two draws from four. A win takes Milan to 11 and to within a point of Cagliari. A Lecce win takes Lecce to 9, past Milan on 8, and ends the unbeaten run. Juventus hosts Atalanta in the other. Juventus has seven points from four with two wins, a draw and a defeat, the same record as Frosinone, and the two are split by a single goal of goal difference, Frosinone plus three to Juventus plus two, which is the whole reason Frosinone sits seventh and Juventus eighth. A Juventus win makes 10, an Atalanta win makes 9.

When Monday's two matches are done the league goes from 45 matches played to 50 and every club is on five. No club in action can be cut off from the top four this round: their tragic numbers run from 31 to 34 against 34 matches left each, which is another way of saying nothing is decided. After that the feed lists three matches, and they are 19 days away. Genoa hosts Fiorentina on October 10, then Lecce hosts Bologna and Inter hosts Parma on October 11. Four clubs appear twice across the eight upcoming fixtures, Fiorentina, Genoa, Lecce and Parma. Inter against Parma is the only one of the eight involving a club on 13 points, and the other three clubs in the top four, Roma, Lazio and Cagliari, do not appear in the feed at all. Through those 19 days the arithmetic does not move a single place, because clinch numbers, tragic numbers and reachable rank ranges change only when matches are played. Today all twenty clubs have a best reachable finish of first and a worst of twentieth, and a pause cannot narrow that by one position.

How to read these numbers. A clinch number in Serie A is counted in points rather than wins: the minimum further points that guarantee a place even if every rival wins every remaining match. A tragic number is the further defeats after which a place becomes impossible even if the club wins everything else. A rank range is the highest and lowest finish still arithmetically reachable. Ties are counted against the club being measured, so a clinch here can trail an official announcement by a day. Four or five matches into a 38 match season the clinch figures sit close to their maximum, which is why they belong in a table rather than a headline. The full table with each club's clinch and tragic numbers is at, the fixture list at, what the top four and the bottom three lead to at, and a scenario builder at. Como's own page is at.