When no one believed it anymore, Bari managed to do everything they hadn’t done during the season: win, convince, score more than two goals away from home and, most important of all, save themselves. For a team capable before yesterday of winning just one match from February onwards, i.e. the 2-0 against Brescia in the last match of the championship, it was difficult to predict a victory, especially away from home where in the whole championship just two arrived.
Yet, on Captain’s birthday Of Caesar, on the day of his probable last match both as a footballer and with the red and white shirt, a true miracle materialized. The captain himself opened the proceedings with a semi-inverted goal, his fifth of the season which is equivalent to his second best scoring performance with the Galletti after the six goals scored in Serie D. It was perhaps all written in the stars, yes because the captain didn’t deserve to end the season with further pain. He deserved to greet his people as a hero because that’s what he was, always putting his face to it and conveying to everything and everyone what wearing that jacket meant.
And then, what goals: one more decisive than the other, one more beautiful than the other complete with the record of the oldest player to score a goal in Serie D, a figure adjusted just yesterday at 41 years of age. Three goals in the last five games for the former Torino player, these are important numbers which have given the red and whites a very important salvation considering that relegation to Serie C would have been equivalent to a failure. And to think that Di Cesare managed to score more goals than Puscas, stuck at four and to be the second most decisive man of the Galletti behind only Sibilli. We start from marking to Reggiana for the final 1-1 in Emilia, continuing with the left cross to the South Tyrol at “San Nicola” (2-1), until arriving at the first feat, the one against Parma of May 1st with an unstoppable round shot. His signature also ended in the 2-0 against Brescia, again a non-trivial goal and yesterday, last but not least, in the second leg play-out final with an unbelievable semi-overhead.
It is difficult, today, to imagine a Bari without Di Cesare. In the post-match, the leader of the Bari team did not totally confirm his farewell to playing football and that “I bought a house in Bari” he leaves some hope because, in one way or another, as a footballer or as a manager, he must, hopefully, continue to represent Bari and the people of Bari. More than someone in Bari would be willing to make a statue of him, and it cannot be ruled out that Mayor Decaro as rumored yesterday, he doesn’t have any surprises in store for him…
