Lazio and Roma Are Both Still Unbeaten — No City Has Ever Done This in Serie A

Serie A stops for a fortnight with something at the top it has never had before. Lazio are first. Roma are third. Neither of them has lost a league game.

Opta's record books say two clubs from the same city have never both gone unbeaten through the first 11 rounds of a Serie A season. Not Milan and Inter, with their 40 Scudetti between them. Rome's two clubs have five league titles combined, and right now they own the top of the table around the champions, who sit between them in second place. The whole race lives on the Serie A front.

Lazio's half of the record is built on refusal. Twenty-nine points is the best start in the club's history, one better than the 28 Simone Inzaghi's side had at this stage in 2017-18. The only other Lazio team to reach 11 games unbeaten was Tommaso Maestrelli's in 1972-73 — the season before the club's first Scudetto. This one has conceded nine goals, the fewest in the division, and nobody in the side has scored more than four: Tijjani Noslin, Gustav Isaksen and Davide Frattesi, whose goal at Napoli on Sunday kept the run alive, sit on four apiece, with Mattia Zaccagni's five assists pulling the strings. Gennaro Gattuso still talks about 40 points as the first target. His team is 11 points away from it, top of the league, and he is not moving the party.

Roma's half is built on volume. Their 31 goals are the division's best attack and a club record at this stage — only the fourth time in 65 years any Serie A side has passed 30 this early. Fourteen different players have scored them. Donyell Malen leads the way with eight. They have kept six clean sheets, a league high, and Saturday's 3-0 win over Sassuolo at the Olimpico — Mario Hermoso in the 27th minute, a Sebastian Walukiewicz own goal three minutes later, Rodrigo Mora in the 58th, his third goal in three straight league games — made it 18 home league games unbeaten and kept Roma unbeaten through 11 for only the third time in the club's history, after 2003-04 and 2013-14. It came four days after they had thrown away a two-goal lead at Old Trafford. Gian Piero Gasperini says he wouldn't sign for second place. Every goal from the Sassuolo game is in its Game Center.

The scepticism is real, and it has numbers of its own. Opta's supercomputer gives Roma an 18% chance of the title and Lazio 10% — because between the Romans sit Inter, the champions, on 28 points, one behind Lazio and one ahead of Roma, with the squad nobody in Italy can match for depth. Milan are fourth on 24 and Como fifth on 23. Further down, the old order is having a miserable autumn: Juventus, seventh on 18 points with their worst start since 2021-22, go into the break with Luciano Spalletti saying his side "wallow in doubt," and Napoli are tenth on 15.

The break cannot settle any of it, but the return weekend is arranged like a test. On Saturday, November 21, Lazio host Lecce, 14th on 10 points, at the Olimpico, and Roma go to Parma, who sit on eight. A day later Inter face the harder examination, away to Atalanta in Bergamo. If all three win, the table keeps its shape for one more week — and then the calendar starts closing in, because on December 13 the two unbeaten Romans meet at the Olimpico in the Derby della Capitale. One city's record, one stadium, and by then quite possibly one unbeaten run left standing.