Bari Times

The city of Bari had acted as a base for myself previously, but it took a freak coincidence for a game to be considered here. Perhaps courtesy of driving on the other side of the road, I have always preferred using the trains in Italy. They are incredibly good value, and offer a fine range of times on any given day in the schedule. 

It took a quirky Walter Presents Italian drama on TV to start showing me the delights of Bari. It is after all the second biggest city in Southern Italy after Napoli. However, my ambivalence continued regarding the local club SSC Bari. Given my passion for nearby Bisceglie and having a soft spot for others in the region, my general inclination is always to be less sympathetic towards the bigger clubs, even if in this case, they do have a rather snazzy stadium. The rationale for avoidance grew arms and legs more recently out of solidarity with a Dutch journalist friend Joris, who had arrived at the San Nicola, complete with a professional photographer, to include the stadium in his brilliant Dutch language photography book, Curva. They were refused entry, and Bari missed out on that exposure. I had also been told that in order to get a ticket, you needed a Fidelity Card, a membership card essentially.

That last piece of information transpired to be untrue, and getting briefs was relatively painless via the online ticket platform. However, my original rail trek from Ascoli to Bari required a two hour journey north to Ancona, and then a whizz down the coast, with the earliest I could arrive in the Puglian capital being well after the proposed kick off that day. It hadn’t bothered me at all. After all, my Belgian friend Steph and I had arranged to meet in Molfetta that evening for a fifth tier match, and all was good. Maybe a week ahead of the trip, Steph decided to add Wednesday and Thursday to his plan, meaning Foggia and Ascoli were on his radar, too. This is where the Bari notion filtered into my thinking, abandoning my rail route and car sharing it all the way down the 400-kilometre highway from Marche to Bari.

It was a remarkably easy jaunt. I was amazed just how quiet the motorway was, resulting in us having so much time to burn we nipped off piste and into Andria to have a peek at the home of Fidelis Andria, complete with a nice chat with one of the club ground staff. There would be no game here that weekend, but he did throw out a town in his list of exceptional Puglian places that certainly aided Steph in a change of direction for his Sunday afternoon action at Martina Franca. Puglia is full of stunning towns and villages, but this one was a new one for us. Steph certainly wasn’t disappointed, even if it brought him another scoreless game, a second in three matches. 

The population of Bari is just under 350,000, but it doesn’t take in the satellite towns almost attached to the city, where the sheer size and feel of Greater Bari is much larger than this figure at a significant 1.3 million. It genuinely is a sprawling place. The real gem of the city is Bari Vecchi, the old tight streets of the yesteryear area that whisk you back in time. It is where cars can hardly rumble, and modernisation is doubtlessly frowned upon. If Lolito Lobosco, the Bari based police drama, had introduced me to the beauty of old Bari, it was mildly amusing to walk through the streets for the first time and happening upon a square I immediately recognised as being where the lead character lived in the drama. 

As a city, it is the capital of Puglia, and Barium as it was known back in the day is another of these ancient cities that had strong Greek roots before coming into the Roman Empire and forming an important trading town on the Via Traiana. It’s fabulous natural harbour would make it an important staging post for maritime gigs, with it first appearing in scripture dating back to 181 BC.

Modern-day Bari, especially in the central area, is set out in a grid fashion, housing some lavishing buildings, including a very ornate theatre. This area is close to the sea, with fine coastal walks available. All routes in the centre bring you down to the harbour area, with Bari Vecchi tucked to one side, a very popular destination for eating, drinking, and just evening strolls. You need to walk through a few busy streets of revellers and squares on a weekend evening to find the pastoral calm of this amazing old city. 

I am sure most readers will be familiar with the iconic architecture of the San Nicola, the home of SSC Bari since 1990, when this stadium was specially constructed to host the World Cup that year. England played Italy for third place here, and it was very soon after rewarded with a European Cup Final between Red Star Belgrade and Marseille in May 1991. One man left an impression on me that night, Darko Pancev, and many years later, one of my proudest football possessions is a signed Vardar Skopje shirt by the great man.

Lecce had buffed up their stadium in an attempt to bid for the Puglia stadium at the 1990 World Cup, but the organiser in conjunction with Bari Council put together a bid to have a statement piece ground built. Even thirty-four years on, it is still an extraordinary design, and nothing else like it exists in Italy for sure. The appearance is almost spaceship like, and walking up to it from one of the vast car parks surrounding it, the San Nicola immediately reminds me of the stunning Zenit Arena in St Petersburg. While the external approach might jog the memory, all similarities evaporate once you have lumbered up the considerable steps to enter the arena. Those utterly pesky running tracks that blight many an Italian stadia far too often is more stark here, making the vast stands feel even further away from the action. Despite the undoubted volume and passion of the Bari fans, it isn’t even vaguely intimidating as the atmosphere won’t feel oppressive on the distant pitch. 

It is almost as if, in putting forward ideas for planning permission and to get more people on board in Italy, the local council’s, who ultimately own the facility, insist on an athletics track. It makes sense, but how often, if ever, are they used? Many fall into disrepair very quickly, further blowing the false facade of merely allowing construction to be approved. More clubs in Italy need to buy their own ground, giving them greater control over their own destiny and finances. Last season’s tale of woe involved US Triestina, a club with the second biggest budget in Serie C who were playing a ridiculous distance from beautiful Trieste for far too long due to the local council approving a concert that ruined the pitch at the amazing Nereo Rocco stadium, requiring a complete surface re-lay.

While SSC Bari set off as a club in 1908, the early days of Italian football struggled to include teams from the South at the inception of the “national” league set, and they fell into abeyance for a period. It was 1924 before they would re-appear, only to find the local area housing rivals, including Foot-Ball Club Liberty, a team who nearly 90 years later would up-sticks and get lost in modern day Monopoli Calcio, a town well south of Bari. 

The club’s golden era was in the thirties and forties, when Bari almost exclusively were involved in Serie A, with a seventh place finish in 1947 the highest placing they achieved. By the ‘50’s the club started to struggle, but found a period of form to enjoy another three top flight season’s at the start of the next decade. It started the pattern, periodic top table nibbling, something that would continue right up to the 1990 World Cup, when more ambition seemed to surround the club. Perhaps having a lavish stadium brought with it a need for the venue to host higher ranking action, and during that period Bari were in Serie A once more. However, despite having David Platt and Gordon Cowan on roster, the club were relegated in 1992. 

The club have been back in Serie A twice subsequently, most recently in 2009/10, but it didn’t last, and when the Materesse family looked to sell up, it brought a number of uncertain years, culminating in various bankruptcy auctions in 2014 when the price continued to lower. Bari then found themselves in the football equivalent of Dante’s circle of hell, Serie C, with a variety of fruitless play-off attempts to get up. The ills affecting the club hadn’t gone away, and Bari were declared bankrupt in 2018, having to start again from Serie D. 

The new owner is Aurelio De Laurentis, who might sound familiar, and that is because he is also the owner of Napoli. His ambition is to get the club back into Serie A as soon as possible, but that will also bring its own complications as Salernitana discovered when they hit the top flight, as an owner can only control one club in the Italian top flight.

Starting from the 4th tier, they whizzed through that tricky league, and nearly got through a pandemic ravaged third tier, losing in the play off final to Reggiana in a curious one off match played in Reggio Emilia at their opponents stadium. The only way to avert such angst again was winning the league, and they finally managed that the following term in 2021/22. 

The confidence and winning habit propelled Bari into another promotion scenario in Serie B the very next season, where an away draw in the final first leg at Cagliari seemed to have set them up for banishing their play off hoodoo. What should have been factored into the equation, aside from the biblical rain, was the manager of the Sardinian team, the one and only Claudio Ranieri, a man with a Midas touch. Even a full house couldn’t see Bari over the line, but as mentioned previously, the running track doesn’t help the opposition to feel an excessive foreboding, and a 94th minute goal sent the majority homeward licking wounds, as Cagliari won 1-0, and the Tinkerman celebrated another remarkable effort by one of his teams.

The hangover from such a heartbreaking conclusion saw Bari struggling to show any consistency last season. That was the story when Steph and I pitched up for a match versus Feralpisalo, one of those well organised smaller teams punching well above its weight, albeit struggling with support given home matches aren’t on the banks of Lake Garda, but significantly south in Piacenza.

Serie B had set a fine high bar to my 2023/24 roster of Italian games with fabulously competitive matches on consecutive late August nights at Cosenza and Catanzaro, but the back to back diet in February was to cough up two ugly clashes at Ascoli, and this dull affair. Despite the home fans keeping up an enthusiastic support, the most pleasing aspect of this game was the glorious heat. As the North Europeans duo were stripping off, it was mildly amusing seeing those nearby still muffled up with coats and scarves. 

The referee tried his best to break the tedium by awarding the home side a penalty, only for VAR to take it away. Not to be outdone by the tele-visual whistler, soon after, a seemingly softer award was upheld. It was duly dispatched, and we all shuffled out with barely a moment of the game worthy of recollection. Feralpi were well organised, tediously cautious until they went behind, but even then, they couldn’t have fought their way out of a paper bag. Sloping back to Serie C will potentially become a blessing with finances not being unduly stretched back home in Salo. Bari will look to dust themselves down and try again for higher things next season, after surviving a relegation Play Out with Ternana.

You can have a Serie A ready stadium and the necessary population base, but neither guarantee success. The angst gets more acute when regional rivals Lecce continue to do well higher up the tree. Sporting one upmanship is important anywhere, but the further south you go in Italy, it matters even more.