Has Any Team Ever Gone 38-0?

Short answer: no. No club has ever won every match of a full top-flight league season. Going 38-0 — 38 wins from 38 games, zero points dropped — has never happened, in England or in any of Europe’s other major 38-game leagues.

The interesting part is how close the very best teams have come, and why even the greatest sides in history always dropped points somewhere.

The most wins anyone has managed

In the 38-game Premier League era, the record for wins in a single season is 32, held jointly by:

• Manchester City, 2017–18 — 32 wins, 4 draws, 2 losses, a record 100 points.
• Liverpool, 2019–20 — 32 wins, 3 draws, 3 losses, 99 points.

Even those historically dominant sides — City scoring 106 goals, Liverpool losing the title race the previous year by a single point — still lost or drew six times each. Manchester City’s 2018–19 (98 points) and 2018 season, and Liverpool’s 2019–20, are the high-water marks of the Premier League era, and all of them fell six wins short of perfect.

The one team that went unbeaten

The closest anyone has come to the spirit of 38-0 is Arsenal’s 2003–04 “Invincibles,” who went all 38 matches without a defeat. But unbeaten and perfect are different things: Arsenal won 26 and drew 12. A perfect season allows no draws at all. Read the full story of the Invincibles.

What about the old 42-game seasons?

Before 1995, the English top flight had 22 clubs and a 42-game season. No team ever went perfect in that format either. The best unbeaten campaign of the longer era belonged to Preston North End all the way back in 1888–89 — and that was a 22-game season.

And other leagues?

The same pattern holds across Europe. In leagues that play a 38-game season:

• Juventus, 2011–12 (Serie A) — went unbeaten, but with 15 draws in 38 games.
• AC Milan, 1991–92 (Serie A, then 34 games) — unbeaten, but with 12 draws.

More recently, Bayer Leverkusen went unbeaten to win the 2023–24 Bundesliga, and Arsenal-style unbeaten seasons have appeared in Scotland, Portugal and elsewhere — but every single one included draws. A literal 100%-win league season at the top level simply does not exist in the record books.

Why it’s essentially never happened

Over a 38-game season you play title rivals, in-form mid-table sides on their big day, and relegation-threatened teams with nothing to lose — home and away, through injuries, fixture congestion and the occasional off day. Winning most of those is the mark of a champion. Winning all of them, with never a slip, is why 38-0 remains football’s great unclaimed record. For the maths of just how unlikely it is, see why going 38-0 is almost impossible.