Inter Crowned Champions Again: A Season of Dominance
By the time the final whistle went at San Siro, the sense was less of discovery than confirmation. Inter were champions again. Of course they were. Parma had been beaten, 2-0, but the Scudetto had felt locked away for weeks.
They did not even need the win. A draw on Sunday would have done it. A draw next week would have done it. Their rivals had fallen away one after another through spring, then all together this weekend. Napoli, Milan, Juventus – none of them managed a victory. It barely mattered now if they had.
Inter started the round 10 points clear. They ended it 12 ahead, mathematically untouchable and, in truth, untouchable in every meaningful way long before the numbers made it official. Eighty-two league goals in a division where nobody else has reached 60. Seventeen clean sheets, matched only by Como. The best team in Serie A by a distance, playing like it.
Ruthless on the night, relentless all season
Parma arrived in Milan with safety already secured and nothing obvious left to chase. They still refused to play the part of willing extras. They tackled hard, broke forward when they could, and held out almost until the interval.
Inter, as they have done so often this year, simply kept tightening the screw.
Nicolò Barella rattled the crossbar on 25 minutes, his shot crashing down on to goalkeeper Zion Suzuki, who reacted superbly to claw the ball away as Marcus Thuram closed in. A reprieve, nothing more.
Just before half-time, the resistance broke. Piotr Zielinski slipped a clever pass through the right channel, Thuram burst clear and slid his finish into the far corner. One chance, one incision, one more reminder of the technical edge that has separated Inter from the pack all year.
The second goal underlined another of this team’s great advantages. Two substitutes combined: Lautaro Martínez squaring unselfishly, Henrikh Mkhitaryan arriving to finish. Fresh legs, same standard. Inter have not only had stars; they have had layers.
That depth has carried them through stretches that would have broken thinner squads. Lautaro, Serie A’s leading scorer, has missed 10 starts with a nagging calf problem. Denzel Dumfries spent three months out and needed ankle surgery. Hakan Calhanoglu, scoring at a rate of a goal every 183 minutes from midfield, has only managed 22 league appearances.
Inter did not just survive those absences. They never truly wobbled.
Chivu’s gamble, Chivu’s title
The most striking part of this story stands on the touchline. Cristian Chivu was not supposed to be the man holding the clipboard for this coronation.
Inter went for Cesc Fàbregas first, only to find him wedded to his Como project. Chivu, with a single senior job on his CV – 13 games in charge of Parma at the end of 2024-25, enough to steer them away from relegation – hardly looked like the obvious next name for one of Europe’s heavyweights.
What he did have was Inter in his bones. Seven years as a player at the club, three Serie A titles, a place in the treble side. Six more years in the youth ranks as a coach, learning the corridors, the expectations, the weight of the shirt.
Even so, this was a leap of faith. The Inter he rejoined were emotionally wrecked after chasing a quadruple under Simone Inzaghi and ending with nothing. Their season had finished with a 5-0 humiliation by Paris Saint-Germain in the Champions League final, then lurched straight into a Club World Cup in the United States barely a fortnight later.
They went out early there too, beaten 2-0 by Fluminense. Tempers frayed. Calhanoglu and other injured players were allowed to leave the training base to continue rehab at home. Rumours swirled about Galatasaray. Lautaro, who had played through his own pain the previous spring, let fly.
“You have to want to be here. We are fighting to achieve something. Anyone who doesn’t want to be here, can leave,” he said.
Ten months on, the picture could hardly be more different. Lautaro and Calhanoglu were side by side on Sunday, parading around San Siro, passing between them a cardboard Scudetto cutout stamped with a huge “21”. Calhanoglu spoke of a squad that had become “more of a group, more of a family,” and credited Chivu for drawing them closer.
Lautaro did not back away from his words, telling Dazn they came from “inside” him, not from any script. But he left them in the past. The present, he insisted, was “only happiness” after “working so hard” to achieve “something special”.
Evolution, not revolution
Chivu inherited a team that had thrilled under Inzaghi but collapsed at the finish. The temptation in such moments is to tear everything up. He resisted it.
Inter still look recognisably like Inzaghi’s side. The same base structure. The same commitment to attacking football. Chivu’s tweaks have been at the edges: a more aggressive press, a greater willingness to go direct when the game demands it.
Has it made them better? Europe offers a counter-argument. Last season Inter beat Barcelona and Bayern Munich before being crushed by PSG in the final. This time they did not even reach the last 16, knocked out by Bodø/Glimt in the knockout phase playoff.
Domestically, the picture is also not spotless. They lost twice to Milan. They took just a single point from two league games against Napoli. Their solitary win over Juventus came after a controversial red card for Pierre Kalulu.
Yet titles are rarely decided solely in the so-called scontri diretti. Inter have hunted this Scudetto by attrition. From November to February they won 14 of 15 league games, dropping points only in a 2-2 draw with Napoli. While others stumbled, they simply kept marching.
New faces, same hunger
This is not a triumph built only on familiar names. Returning stalwarts have been joined by fresh energy: Francesco Pio Esposito, Ange-Yoan Bonny, Petar Sucic. All have played their part in keeping the machine running.
Inter also had to rip up their transfer blueprint last summer. The primary target, Ademola Lookman, never arrived. They adjusted on the fly, reshaping the squad without the wide threat they had planned around.
Federico Dimarco helped close that gap almost on his own. Seventeen assists from left-back is an outrageous return in any league, in any era. For Inter, it was often the difference between dominance and deadlock.
Nothing about this season has been flawless. Football never is. But the essential detail is unarguable: Inter have now won Serie A three times in six years, each under a different manager. Chivu, whatever doubts remain about his ceiling in Europe, is the first Inter coach since José Mourinho to win the Scudetto at the first attempt.
Party now, more to play for
The calendar says their work is not finished. A Coppa Italia final against Lazio awaits on 13 May. Only after that will Inter stage their formal Scudetto ceremony, lifting the league trophy at the end of their last home game, against Verona four days later.
Try telling that to Milan on Sunday night.
Streamers flew across the San Siro pitch. Fireworks lit the sky. Lautaro, Dimarco, Thuram, Barella, Pio Esposito and the rest eventually left the stadium and did what Inter teams do when they win: they headed for Piazza Duomo, where thousands of supporters were already spilling into the square, flags snapping in the air.
Twelve months ago, this club stood amid the wreckage of a season that had promised everything and delivered nothing. Now they stand with the Scudetto back on their chest, a cup final still to come, and a simple, unavoidable question hanging over Serie A.
If this was Chivu’s first step, what does the second one look like?
