Serie A’s first goalless draw of this season arrived in its 54th match, ironically between two of its more prolific teams. Perhaps things might have ended differently between Como and Roma if the division’s leading scorer, Donyell Malen, had not earned a red card at the start of the second half. A missed opportunity for both sides?
Roma started brighter and hit the post through Lorenzo Pellegrini. Como dominated absolutely after the red card, with 80% of possession, but could not make pressure count. In the end, it was a result each team could live with.
Returning from this season’s first international break, Como and Roma remain the most likely contenders to challenge Inter. But a couple of more surprising teams are making their presence felt near the top of the table. Lazio’s 3-1 win over Monza on Sunday kept them level with the Nerazzurri in first place.
An astonishing feat at a time when their fans won’t even come to home games. And then there is Cagliari. The Sardinians have finished in the upper half of Serie A only once in the last 30 years.
Champions of Italy in 1970, they have scarcely made it into another title conversation since. But they began this season with four wins from five matches, their best start to a top-flight campaign for more than half a century. Should we have seen this coming?
Cagliari ended last season strongly, winning four of their final seven matches. The first signs of a project coming together under Fabio Pisacane, a popular former player who returned as assistant coach in 2022 and then worked with the academy for two years before leading the first team in 2025. An extraordinary individual, who earned the Guardian’s first-ever Player of the Year award in 2016, Pisacane lived with Guillain-Barré syndrome as a teenager, becoming paralysed and spending 20 days in a coma, but recovered and ascended Italian football’s lower divisions to make his Serie A debut at 30.
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