Against Bari it will never be a normal match for Ternana. That is, playing against a big team in the Serie B championship is always a good test. But Bari even more. Bari brings with it a thousand emotions (READ HERE), to bring them back to everyone’s minds, whenever there is a need. Bari takes you back in time and drives you crazy with its roller coasters.
Going to Bari for Ternana was almost always a pain. But the (few) are red-green in (recent) memory. Bari means the relegation of 2001, perhaps the most bitter, because the most unexpected, the angry one. The one in which you still can’t understand how it was possible to lose that match where everything that could go wrong went wrong in a context that also kept the Italian judiciary busy and that made the whole city bleed bitterly.
Bari brings with it the incredible promotion of 2021, 20 years later. Where in the double match Bari was annihilated and took so many points in the standings that already in the direct match (won by Ternana) there was talk of virtual promotion (it was mid-March).
Bari carries with it the playoffs of a few months earlier, where Ternana with 10 men sold their lives dearly.
Bari brings with it a lot of kilometers and just as many disappointments. He brings with him a series of endless exes who have colored history red-green (or red-white). But staying with us, one of the most talented players of recent years arrives from Bari (Partipilo, who just recently said that he hoped for Bari’s salvation: but well before the playoffs, try asking him the question now, if he answers…). The captain par excellence of recent years arrives from Bari: Marino Defendi who scored one of the most important goals in the history of the rossoverde against Bari. One of the most loved attackers in the red and green went to Bari (to write a little piece of their history): Mirco Antenucci. And so on.
Ternana-Bari will never be a match like the others. It brings you mixed emotions and sensations. Hot cold, salty sweet, high low, pain and ecstasy. And thinking that there will be another chapter of this saga with exactly the same characteristics makes the city’s adrenaline rise even more.
Not that it would have been different against Ascoli (since it would have been a half derby) but with Bari you have to shake off some memories and cling to others. We shouldn’t think about this championship, for example, but about the previous ones.
Bari recalls celebration and tears. And this time there will be either one or the other.
We have shed enough tears, right before their eyes. Now it would be time to swap roles.
