An Important Game
Bari Vs Venezia - my first visit to an Italian football stadium and the match couldn't have been more important. It was Bari's final home match of the season that they had to win in order to have any chance of staying in Serie B. If they lost, it would mean relegation to Serie C, the equivalent of the British 2nd division. So on a pleasant June evening at the San Nicola stadium, Felice and I joined the thousands of other supporters that had been encouraged to attend. As the ticket price was just 1 euro it was no surprise to see hoards of people gathering but even so, it by no means filled the huge 58,000 seater stadium.
I'd never seen anything quite like it. From the outside the stadium looks like a large space ship, with lights all around that were shining brightly for the evening game. The inside is just as impressive with its tiers of seats that were unfortunately not very comfortable because we were in the 'sit where you like' section of the east curve that is filled with stone seats making it feel rather cold!
The Bari supporters were in full spirit, chanting as loudly as possible whereas the small section of Venezia supporters hardly made a noise. As the teams came onto the pitch, Bari in their white shirts with a red trim and Venezia in black, there was an explosion of colours from the upper tier as fireworks lit up the night sky sending a slight shiver down my spine in fear that it was getting a little dangerous! But as Felice explained, this is perfectly normal at passionate Italian football matches! The roar from the crowd was quite deafening as banners were waved showing support for the team that was on the verge of something disastrous if they were to lose.
The unexciting 1st half led to a slightly better 2nd half when Bari finally scored after a long period of domination. The crowd went expectantly wild, jumping up and down, letting off more fireworks and hugging each other!
There were a handful of lost opportunities near goal but it finished 1-0 to Bari and the team and its supporters could breath a sigh of relief. Since then Bari lost the final match of the season, were relegated to Serie C only to return to Serie B having swapped places with Naples FC because of the lack of finance available at Naples!?