No, this time it doesn’t even make sense to underline the discreet first half of the roosters, as usual only able to react after taking the slap in the 5th minute of the game. Pittarello’s goal on an assist from Giraudo, totally forgotten by Dorval, is yet another cold shower of the ready-to-go; he is no longer news, nor is it worth recapitulating all the times the sad script has repeated itself. In fact, Bari doesn’t raise the white flag now only because Cittadella offers them a generous collaboration: first Cassano becomes the author of the crazy back pass that allows Acampora (the revived one) to send Nasti on goal for the equalizer, then Rizza graces Pissardo missing a goal from zero meters.
Without the help of the Venetians, a team that reached the championship final with practically no goals left, we would have celebrated a funeral 90 minutes early, and we would have already dedicated this week to the trials that – inevitably – will bring to trial all those responsible for this sporting disaster ; whether they want it or not. A veil of indecipherable confusion hovers over the red and white team (or what little remains of it), plastically reproduced by the “triple alliance” Polito-Giampaolo-Di Bari who commands operations from the bench. Who actually gives the indications is not clear, but we believe we are not far from the truth if we say that the director Polito is trying, by trying his hand at the role of technical guide, to remedy a team built (between summer and winter) without criteria, and managed even worse during a completely unsuccessful season.
Bari starts with the 4-3-1-2, then (with Maita’s injury and the entry of Achik) already in the first half they switch to 4-3-3, and then turn to 4-2-4 with the entrance of Puscas and Kallon in the finale. A different module for each technical guide, a tactical jumble that translates into the field the lack of clarity that dwells in the minds of those who lead the team, who from their side are confirming at every good opportunity that they have very little technical content, and even less soul . In fact, if the two best players on the pitch are Acampora who hadn’t started since the dawn of time, and goalkeeper Pissardo (too late preferred to Brenno, perhaps there would be a few more points now) then the contours of the disaster are perfectly outlined. True, in the first half goalkeeper Kastrati says no to Sibilli with a complex instinctive save, then in the second half Achik first gets blocked on the line by Pavan, then tries to draw the joker from distance, failing not by much. But it is little, far too little for a team that should be moved by the force of desperation, and which once again seemed – at best – to settle for yet another “political” point. A calculation gone wrong, yet another.
And now? Friday will be the moment of truth, one way or another. We will have to cross gloves at a distance with Ternana and Ascoli, two teams technically perhaps not superior to Bari, but who are really putting everything they have to save their skin. The defeats in the final minutes even defeated the very fast Catanzaro, the Marche team managed at the last minute to recover a point on the Palermo pitch; these results would currently give Bari qualification for the playouts in a disadvantaged position, but everything is still so liquid that no calculation can offer relief and reassurance. The director Polito or even the president Luigi De Laurentiis, from the “belly” of Tombolato, would have made a nice gesture towards the fans by appearing in front of the microphones and guaranteeing everyone’s maximum commitment to (at least) try to save the category. But here, now, if it is not Captain Di Cesare who takes responsibility, on and off the pitch, we prefer to proceed with a press silence that was never declared or communicated, interrupted and then restored in fits and starts. And from this attitude we understand many things.
It will be a week of passion, we were saying, which will lead to the match between Bari and Brescia at San Nicola next Friday. The swallows, with the comfort of mathematical qualification for the playoffs, will play to try to gain some more advantageous positions in the promotion play-off grid, while Bari will risk their lives; of the players, of the staff, of the management, of the ownership, but above all of a fanbase vilified and outraged beyond measure. The almost 900 red and white supporters who arrived at Cittadella would not have deserved this latest slap; but, here too, we risk repeating ourselves.
To hope for the playouts, probably from fourth to last in the table, a victory against Brescia would be needed at all costs, to avoid the further humiliation of remaining in suspense awaiting the results from other fields. Yes, a victory… Bari is called to do, at the last corner, what they haven’t managed for 12 (twelve) games, two months and three weeks. All hope, now, hangs by a very thin thread, suspended in mid-air looking at the infernal abyss of the return to Serie C.
