GdS: Allegri gets the calculator out again – how his projections compare with history

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.