Napoli is in, but Serie A’s final-day Champions League math is still wide open

MILAN (AP) — Napoli secured a spot in next season’s Champions League but the other two places in Europe’s elite club competition could go to any of four teams in Serie A.

Scott McTominay, Amir Rrahmani and Rasmus Højlund scored to help Napoli to a comfortable 3-0 win at already-relegated Pisa on Sunday to ensure Antonio Conte’s team will finish in the top four of the Italian league, with just one round remaining.

AC Milan and Roma also won on Sunday to leave them level on 70 points in third and fourth place. Juventus and Como were two points further back.

Milan and Roma play Cagliari and Hellas Verona, respectively, in their final matches. Juventus visits Torino in the derby and Como travels to Cremonese.

Just like in the penultimate round, all those matches will kick off simultaneously.

Inter Milan won the Serie A title with three rounds remaining and will celebrate after its match against Hellas Verona later, its final home game of the season.

Christian Pulisic came on as a second-half substitute to help Milan to a crucial 2-1 win at Genoa.

Pulisic missed Milan’s last match with a lower-back problem but the United States forward recovered earlier than expected and was brought on in the 76th minute with the Rossoneri winning 1-0 thanks to Christopher Nkunku’s penalty.

Pulisic had an immediate impact, five minutes after coming off the bench, as he laid off the ball to Zachary Athekame, who drilled into the bottom corner from outside the area.

Johan Vásquez pulled one back for Genoa a few minutes later.

Roma won the derby against Lazio 2-0, but there were brawls between the players after each of the goals.

Roma defender Wesley and Lazio midfielder Nicolò Rovella were spotted throwing punches at each other in the second brawl and both were shown red cards.

Gianluca Mancini twice headed in corners for the goals.

Elsewhere, Juventus was roundly jeered after losing 2-0 at home to fierce rivals Fiorentina, while Como held on for a 1-0 win over Parma to leave Cesc Fàbregas’ team still in with a chance of qualifying for the Champions League just seven years after playing in Italy's fourth division.

All 10 Serie A matches were taking place on Sunday, with the teams involved in the relegation battle to play later.

Pisa and Verona have already been relegated but Cremonese is just one point below 17th-place Lecce and safety and six below Cagliari.

Cremonese and Lecce visit Udinese and Sassuolo, respectively, while Cagliari hosts Torino.

AP soccer: https://apnews.com/hub/soccer

Napoli's Stanislav Lobotka drives the ball during the Serie A soccer match between Pisa and Napoli in Pisa, Italy, Sunday May 17 2026. (Alessandro La Rocca/LaPresse via AP)

Roma's Stephan El Shaarawy celebrates with teammates at the end of the Italian Serie A soccer match between Roma and Lazio in Rome, Sunday, May 17, 2026. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)

Roma's Gianluca Mancini celebrates with soccer fans after scoring during the Italian Serie A soccer match between Roma and Lazio in Rome, Sunday, May 17, 2026. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)

Roma's Gianluca Mancini celebrates after scoring during the Italian Serie A soccer match between Roma and Lazio in Rome, Sunday, May 17, 2026. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)

Napoli's Amir Rrahmani celebrates after scoring during the Serie A soccer match between Pisa and Napoli in Pisa, Italy, Sunday May 17 2026. (Alessandro La Rocca/LaPresse via AP)

ROME (AP) — The researchers in Ireland looked at their computer screen, marveling at a medieval book tracked down in a Roman library. They flipped through its digitized pages and found their sought-after treasure: the oldest surviving English poem.

“We were extremely surprised. We were speechless. We couldn’t believe our eyes when we first saw that,” Elisabetta Magnanti, a visiting research fellow at Trinity College Dublin's school of English, told The Associated Press.

What's more, she said, the poem was within the main body of Latin text: "It was extraordinary.”

Composed in Old English by a Northumbrian agricultural worker in the 7th century, "Caedmon’s Hymn" appears within some copies of the “Ecclesiastical History of the English People,” written in Latin by a monk and saint known as the Venerable Bede. His history is one of the most widely reproduced texts from the Middle Ages, with almost 200 manuscripts, according to Magnanti's colleague Mark Faulkner, an associate professor of medieval literature at Trinity.

He considers Caedmon’s poem to be the start of English literature.

The manuscript he and Magnanti found is one of the oldest, dating from the 9th century. Two earlier copies contain the poem in Old English, but as afterthoughts — translated from Latin and scrawled into the margin by later scribes or appended but not within the text's main body, according to the researchers.

The discovery sheds light on the English language's wide diffusion, long before what was previously understood, Faulkner said in Rome, where the duo had traveled to view the text in person for the first time.

“Prior to the discovery of the Rome manuscript, the earliest one was from the early 12th century. So this is three centuries earlier than that. And so it attests to the importance that was already being attached to the English in the early 9th century,” Faulkner said.

And it's something of a miracle they uncovered it at all.

Caedmon is said to have composed the poem while working at Whitby Abbey in North Yorkshire, after guests at a feast began reciting poems, Faulkner said.

“Embarrassed that he didn’t know anything suitable, Caedmon left the feast and went to bed," he said. "A figure then appeared to him in his dreams telling him to sing about creation, which Caedmon miraculously did, producing the nine-line hymn."

Some 1,400 years later, this copy of his poem resurfaced in Rome’s main public library — but not before crossing the Atlantic Ocean at least twice and changing hands even more times.

Monks transcribed this copy of Bede's history in the scriptorium of the Benedictine abbey of Nonantola, one of the most important transcription centers during the Middle Ages, located near modern-day Modena in northern Italy, according to Valentina Longo, curator of medieval and modern manuscripts at Rome's National Central Library.

In the 17th century, as the abbey's importance declined, its vast collection of manuscripts was shifted to another abbey in Rome, then moved to the Vatican and finally on to a small church.

Along the way, some of the texts went missing, only to emerge in the early 19th century in the possession of famous international collectors, Longo said.

This copy of Bede's history went to renowned English antiquarian Thomas Phillipps. He fell on hard times, selling off bits and pieces of his collection, and Swiss bibliophile Martin Bodmer secured the book. From there, somehow, it arrived in New York City, in the trove of Austrian-born rare bookseller H.P. Kraus during the 20th century.

Italy's culture ministry was scouring the world for the Nonantola abbey's missing manuscripts, snapping them up in auctions and from collectors around the world. It bought the copy of Bede's history from Kraus in 1972, Longo said, and since then the illustrious text has remained in Rome's library — but received scant notice.

Enter Magnanti, who had spent over four years studying Bede’s history and was compiling a catalog of extant copies.

“I knew that the book was listed in the library’s catalog, so I was almost certain that the book was, in fact, still here," she said. “I realized that, because of the very complex history of this book, no Bede scholar had really looked at it. So it had been virtually unstudied."

She emailed the library, which confirmed the book was in its stacks. Three months later, she received digital images of the entire manuscript.

Nupue. sciulun. herga. hefunricaes. puard. metudaes. maechti. and his.

mod geðanc. puerc. puldur. fadur. suæhepundragiaes

ecidrichtin or astalde. he aeristscoop eor dubearnū hefento

hrofe halig. sceppend. ða. middū. geard. moncinnes peard eci

drichtin. aefter. tia de. firū. on foldu. frea. allmechtig.

Now we must praise the guardian of the heavenly kingdom,

the might of the creator and his intention,

the work of the father of glory, in that he of each wonder,

eternal lord, established the beginning.

He first created the earth for men,

heaven as a roof, the holy creator,

then the middle earth, the guardian of mankind,

the eternal lord, afterwards created

for men on earth, the almighty lord.

The library has digitized the entire Nonantolan collection and it is freely accessible through the website, Longo said.

It's part of a massive project by the library to make thousands of rare books and manuscripts available to researchers around the world, according to Andrea Cappa, the library's head of manuscripts and the rare books reading room.

“The discovery made by the experts of Trinity College is just one starting point, a single manuscript that might pave the way for countless other discoveries, in countless other fields, through international cooperation like this,” Cappa said.

—

An earlier version of the story mistakenly quoted Elisabetta Magnanti as saying that “no big scholar had really looked” at the book before. She said “no Bede scholar had really looked at it”.

The 8th-century manuscript copy of the Venerable Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People, containing a rare, long-lost copy of Caedmon's Hymn — the first poem ever written down in Old English — is seen at Rome's National Library, Thursday, May 8, 2026. (AP Photo/Andrea Rosa)

A rare, long-lost copy of Caedmon's Hymn — the first poem ever written down in Old English — is visible in the five lines above the final line of a page from an 8th-century manuscript copy of the Venerable Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People, at Rome's National Library, Thursday, May 8, 2026. (AP Photo/Andrea Rosa)

From left, Elisabetta Magnanti, Mark Faulkner of Dublin's Trinity College, Andrea Cappa and Valentina Longo of Rome's National Central Library examine a manuscript containing a rare, long-lost copy of Caedmon's Hymn — the first poem ever written down in Old English — at Rome's National Library, Thursday, May 8, 2026. (AP Photo/Andrea Rosa)

From left, Elisabetta Magnanti and Mark Faulkner from Dublin's Trinity College and Valentina Longo of Rome's National Central Library look at a manuscript containing a rare, long-lost copy of Caedmon's Hymn, the first poem ever to be written down in Old English, at Rome's National Library, Thursday, May 8, 2026. (AP Photo/Andrea Rosa)

A rare, long-lost copy of Caedmon's Hymn — the first poem ever written down in Old English — is visible in the five lines above the final line of the left page from an 8th-century manuscript copy of the Venerable Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People, at Rome's National Library, Thursday, May 8, 2026. (AP Photo/Andrea Rosa)null