For the first time since before the Champions League even existed, neither AC Milan nor Juventus will play European football's top competition next season. In their place: Como, a club that was playing amateur football less than a decade ago.
Since UEFA rebranded the European Cup in 1992-93, at least one of those two giants had always been in the draw. That run is over. And the ripple effects — financially, culturally, structurally — will define Italian football's next several years.
Milan in crisis, Juventus in rebuild mode
Milan's collapse is the sharper wound. A 2-1 home defeat to Cagliari — bottom-half Cagliari — dumped them into fifth place and out of elite Europe for a second consecutive year. Fans hung banners outside owner Gerry Cardinale's hotel and at San Siro: "Go home: shame on you." Hard to argue with the sentiment.
Fabio Capello, who played for and managed the club, didn't hold back: "I saw a team, Allegri's, without strength, without will, without ideas." An immediate leadership overhaul is coming, per Italian media. Allegri's position is precarious. Several first-team players are heading for the exit. Whatever comes next, it won't look much like what came before.
Juventus finished sixth, also out of the Champions League, after a 2-2 draw at city rivals Torino. Spalletti keeps his job — the board is backing him through what they're framing as a structured rebuild under tighter financial constraints. But without Champions League revenue, that rebuild just became considerably harder to execute.
"We're all working together, even more so now that we won't have the Champions League cash," Spalletti said. "We'll have to be doubly good." He also flagged a character problem in the squad — inconsistency that cost them points all season. "We need players who raise the level of personality. This is why sometimes we played some great games and other times we sank like a stone."
Both clubs' squad-building and transfer market value will take a hit without European football. Any player with top-level ambitions will be harder to recruit and harder to keep. That softens the odds on either Milan or Juventus bouncing back quickly next season — a useful datapoint if you're looking at Serie A title markets for 2025-26.
Como's rise is genuinely extraordinary
While Milan and Turin absorb the damage, Como are celebrating something that should not be possible this quickly. Fourth place in Serie A. Champions League football. For a club that was in the amateur tiers less than a decade ago.
Cesc Fabregas, their 38-year-old manager and former World Cup winner, put it plainly: "When I arrived four years ago as a player we changed in a bar, today we're in the Champions League. It's a masterpiece from the whole squad."
The architect of that masterpiece on the pitch is Nico Paz. The 21-year-old Argentine — on loan from Real Madrid, who reportedly hold a buy-back clause — posted 12 goals and seven assists across the league campaign. He is the reason Como looked like a top-four team rather than a relegation fight. Madrid triggering that clause this summer would be a serious blow to any Champions League ambitions Como might actually start to believe in.
Italy's broader picture is just as uncomfortable. This season was the first since 1986-87 that Italian clubs were entirely absent from the semi-finals across all three major European competitions. The national team has also failed to qualify for a third consecutive World Cup. The structural problems run deeper than one bad season for two big clubs.
Inter Milan, Napoli, and Roma join Como in the Champions League. The other half of Milan will be in Europe's elite competition while their city rivals are not. That's a sentence that would have seemed unthinkable two years ago.
