Moreno Longo and Giuseppe Magalini. Bari 2024/25 starts again from this unusual couple. After three abundant weeks of casting, reflections and evaluations following the salvation achieved on the night in Terni, the De Laurentiis family has identified the two pillars of the new season. Joining them will be the now former captain Valerio Di Cesare, who has moved on to a managerial role yet to be defined but still very close to the technical area. The procedures for identifying the duo to whom to entrust the keys of the new Bari after the farewell with the sporting director Ciro Polito and a season which saw four technical managers alternating on the bench, from Mignani to Marino up to Iachini and the staff led by Federico Giampaolo, it wasn’t easy. However, dawn next week should be the right time for the first official announcements.
What Longo and Magalini have in common will be the duration of the contract that will bind them to Bari, for a two-year period, and their ambition. That of the coach who wants to forget a bizarre season in Como, which ended in mid-November 2023 with his dismissal after a victory over Ascoli and with the team – then promoted to Serie A at the end of the season – in the playoff zone, and that of manager, who after two years on the rise in Catanzaro – promotion from C to B with record points and playoffs achieved on the upper floor, working in line with the former Bari player Vincenzo Vivarini – has decided to say goodbye to Calabria to attempt the red and white challenge, supported by Di Cesare who had been his footballer at the time of Mantua. On the identity card they are separated by 15 years, in favor of the 48 year old Longo, on the field they speak a similar language. That of those who have always embraced a proactive idea of football, in which scoring one more goal than the opponent is worth more than not conceding any.
There is undoubtedly a special bond between Longo and Bari. His mother is from Corso Mazzini in Bari, as the coach himself proudly recalled every time she met the red and whites. Longo’s name had been in the wish drawer of the red and white club for days but the real breakthrough came on Thursday. Telephone contact, followed by a conference call in which Luigi De Laurentiis took part and with contents extended to the technical area. Until the red and white smoke. Now the Piedmontese coach could see first-hand what he had described at his first meeting with Bari in 2016 as «a high-level Serie A reality. Entering the San Nicola spaceship means being in the football that counts.” Soon, very soon, he will have to be the master of the house.
