Serie A table after matchday 5, September 2026: three clubs cannot reach a safe total, Milan one point short

Three Serie A clubs can no longer reach a points total that guarantees safety. Bologna tops out at 101, Genoa at 100 and Venezia at 99, and the total that cannot be dragged into the bottom three is 102. At the other end, exactly four clubs carry a top four clinch number, and they are the four clubs already in the top four. Milan, fifth, misses that bar by a single point.

Every number here is as of the September 21 update. All twenty clubs have played five matches and have 33 left, so 50 of the season's 380 matches are in and matchday 5 is complete. All ten of the round's results are in the feed, dated September 19 to 21.

Roma, Inter and Lazio each need 98 more points to guarantee a top four finish. Cagliari needs 99, which is every point left on a 33 match schedule, so Cagliari guarantees fourth place on its own results only by winning all 33. Add each figure to the points already banked and the answer is 111 every time. A club that reaches 111 cannot be pushed out of the top four by any combination of other results. Milan, fifth on 11 points, would finish on 110 by winning everything, one point under the bar, and that single point is the whole reason its clinch cell is blank. Frosinone, Juventus and Como top out at 109.

Seventeen clubs carry a safety clinch number and all seventeen add up to the same total. Roma, Inter and Lazio need 89, Cagliari 90, Milan 91, Frosinone, Juventus and Como 92, Napoli and Sassuolo 95, Atalanta and Lecce 96, and the five clubs tied on 4 points need 98. Every one of those sums to 102. The three blank cells in that column belong to the bottom three, because Bologna cannot pass 101, Genoa cannot pass 100 and Venezia cannot pass 99. The relegation tragic column names the same three clubs and nobody else: Bologna 33, Genoa 33, Venezia 32. The two columns measure different things. The clinch number is where safety stops depending on anyone else, and the tragic number is where safety stops being arithmetically possible, so Bologna and Genoa would have to lose all 33 of their remaining matches to reach it, and Venezia 32 of its 33.

Three results could have changed which clubs sit in the top four. Lazio won 2-0 at Venezia and holds third on 13 points; without those three points Lazio is on 10, below Cagliari on 12 and Milan on 11. Cagliari won 1-0 at Udinese and holds fourth on 12; without those three points Cagliari is on 9, below Milan and below Frosinone, Juventus and Como on 10. Frosinone beat Como 2-0, and Como needed that match the other way round, because a win would have taken it to 13 and past Cagliari. Como is eighth on 10 instead, and its defeat cut the unbeaten list to four clubs, Roma, Inter, Lazio and Milan. Roma 2-2 Inter left the two of them level on 13.

Four results involved clubs at the foot of the table. Parma beat Genoa 2-1 and is 15th on 4 points, with Genoa 19th on 1. Monza beat Sassuolo 2-1 and is 16th, also on 4; without that win Monza would still be on the same 1 point line Genoa occupies. Venezia lost 2-0 to Lazio and is the only club in the league still on nothing, five defeats from five. Bologna drew 1-1 at home with Torino, which leaves it on 2 points from five matches with no win yet, 18th, and Torino 14th on 4.

The rest of the feed rearranged the middle without settling anything. Fiorentina 1-1 Napoli put Napoli ninth on 7 points, level with Sassuolo, and left Fiorentina 17th on 4 with the worst goal record of the five clubs on that figure. Milan 3-0 Lecce kept Milan unbeaten at three wins and two draws and left Lecce 12th on 6. Juventus 2-0 Atalanta lifted Juventus to 10 and held Atalanta on 6. Frosinone, Juventus and Como now carry identical engine rows: no clinch number, a top four tragic number of 33, a safety number of 92 and a reachable range of first to twentieth. The table splits them on goals, Frosinone plus five, Juventus plus four, Como plus three, and the engine does not use goals at all. Nothing was eliminated this round either. Top four tragic numbers run from 30 to 33 against 33 matches left for every club, and all twenty clubs still have a best reachable finish of first and a worst of twentieth.

The next number to move is 19 days away. Genoa hosts Fiorentina on October 10. On October 11 Lecce hosts Bologna, Inter hosts Parma, Lazio hosts Monza, Napoli hosts Frosinone and Como hosts Roma. On October 12 Cagliari hosts Juventus and Sassuolo hosts Milan, and on October 13 Atalanta hosts Venezia and Torino hosts Udinese. Those are the round's ten fixtures, dates in Korean time, and every club plays once. All four clubs with a clinch number are in them, and so are all three clubs with no safety number: Bologna at Lecce, Genoa at home to Fiorentina and Venezia at Atalanta. Until October 10 not one figure above changes, because clinch numbers, tragic numbers and reachable ranges move only when matches are played.

Correction, September 29: An earlier version said only eight of the round's ten results were in the feed, that the results of Cagliari, Udinese, Torino and Bologna were missing, and that Atalanta, Udinese, Torino and Venezia had no fixture in the next round. All ten results are in the feed and the next round has ten fixtures. The paragraphs above now include Udinese 0-1 Cagliari, Bologna 1-1 Torino, Atalanta against Venezia and Torino against Udinese. None of the clinch or tragic numbers changed.

Update, October 14: The round was played on the dates this piece gave, and our piece on the results is at. Of the three clubs this piece said could not reach a safe total, Bologna won 2-1 at Lecce and now carry a safety line of 96, because the total itself fell from 102 to 101 and Bologna's maximum is still 101. Genoa beat Fiorentina 2-1 and lost their relegation tragic number, but their maximum of 100 is below 101 and they have no safety line. Venezia lost 3-1 at Atalanta and their relegation tragic number is 31, the only one left in the league. The same four clubs carry the top four clinch numbers, now 93 for Inter and Lazio, 95 for Roma and 96 for Cagliari, all adding to 109, and Milan, 1-1 at Sassuolo, top out at 108, one point under that total again. Of the five clubs on 4 points that each needed 98 for safety, Udinese, Parma, Monza and Fiorentina lost and have no safety line now, while Torino beat Udinese 2-1 and have 94. Nothing was clinched or eliminated.

How to read these numbers. A clinch number in Serie A is counted in points rather than wins: the minimum a club must still collect for a place to be guaranteed even if every rival wins every remaining match. A tragic number is the number of further defeats after which that place becomes impossible even if the club wins everything else. A reachable range is the highest and lowest finish still arithmetically possible. Ties are handled against the club being measured, in both directions. On the clinch side a rival that can pull exactly level still counts as a threat, so a clinch here can trail an official announcement by a day. On the elimination side a rival has to be able to finish strictly ahead before it counts, so being caught on points eliminates nobody. Goal difference, head to head fixtures and the official tiebreakers are not part of any figure in this article. The full table is at, the fixture list at, what the top four and the bottom three lead to at, a scenario builder at, the clinch and tragic columns on their own at and the method behind them at. Milan's page is at and Cagliari's at.