Marked for Danilo Colombo
From our football correspondent
Steady
Squad13 Dec 2027
Danilo Colombo damages knee ligaments — 19 days out
The words a physio says slowly. 19 days is what the club will announce and everybody who has heard this diagnosis before knows the number is the least of it: the knee comes back before the player does.
Match11 Dec 2027
Nobody wins at Bari
18 home matches unbeaten. Visiting sides arrive already talking about the atmosphere, which is usually the sign that they have half-lost before kickoff.
Player ratings13 Dec 2027
Successful dribbles: 30. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
Match13 Dec 2027
Bari refuse to drop out of the race
Position 3, 30 points, and the result everyone checks first is now theirs. The word is still not being said around the ground, which is how you know everyone is thinking it.
Match11 Dec 2027
9 unbeaten for Bari
Hard to beat is not the same as winning, but 9 matches without defeat is a foundation Bari did not have in the autumn.
Squad13 Dec 2027
Tempers go at Bari
Antonino Gallo was at the centre of it, and by the time it was pulled apart there were three or four others involved. Training grounds are small places and long seasons make them smaller.
Squad13 Dec 2027
Words at Bari training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Valerio Mantovani is at the centre of it, and the squad will now find out whether the standard rises or the pair of them simply stop speaking.
Squad13 Dec 2027
27 days, the medical staff say, and medical staff are optimists by profession. The team sheet will look wrong without him.
Match11 Dec 2027
Bari share the spoils with Modena
A 1‑1 draw with Modena leaves the dressing room somewhere between relief and regret.
In brief
-
Market
The Giovanni Giunti talk will not go away
-
Boardroom
The Bari production line keeps running
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Steady
Squad6 Dec 2027
A knee injury of the worst kind for Danilo Colombo
29 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Bari lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Match4 Dec 2027
8 unbeaten for Bari
Hard to beat is not the same as winning, but 8 matches without defeat is a foundation Bari did not have in the autumn.
Market6 Dec 2027
“I want to be playing for trophies while my legs still let me.” Nothing in that sentence is a transfer request, and nobody at Bari heard it as anything else.
Squad6 Dec 2027
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Bari this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad6 Dec 2027
Jayden Addai is in the form of his life
A season average of 7.29 with 12 goals behind it. Opponents have started planning around him, which is the sincerest compliment football pays.
The terraces6 Dec 2027
Bari supporters have found a favourite in Jayden Addai
There is a particular warmth a ground reserves for a 22-year-old it feels ownership of. Jayden Addai has it now, and everything he does for the rest of his time here will be measured against the goodwill he was handed for free.
Match4 Dec 2027
Ask anyone on the way out what separated the sides and you will get one name: Jayden Addai. 1‑0 against Pescara, and the applause at the whistle was mostly his.
Squad6 Dec 2027
“The easiest signature of my career.” Guido Gomez and Bari agree another 2 years, and the manager can plan around him rather than about him.
Boardroom6 Dec 2027
Bari release $12.5M for the manager
The board have put money on the table rather than an encouraging word. What happens to it now is somebody else's problem, and somebody else's job.
From our football correspondent
Steady
Player ratings29 Nov 2027
Successful dribbles: 53. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
Squad29 Nov 2027
A knee injury of the worst kind for Danilo Colombo
36 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Bari lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Match27 Nov 2027
Nobody wins at Bari
17 home matches unbeaten. Visiting sides arrive already talking about the atmosphere, which is usually the sign that they have half-lost before kickoff.
Market29 Nov 2027
Lukas Grgić has one foot out of the door
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Bari they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
Market29 Nov 2027
The general version of this complaint is that a player wants more. The specific version names the thing: he wants to walk out under floodlights against clubs from other countries, and he has stopped pretending otherwise.
Squad29 Nov 2027
Tempers go at Bari
Antonino Gallo was at the centre of it, and by the time it was pulled apart there were three or four others involved. Training grounds are small places and long seasons make them smaller.
Match27 Nov 2027
Whatever happens, Bari do not lose
7 games unbeaten now. Some were earned and some were survived, but a habit is forming — and habits are the hardest thing in football to play against.
Squad29 Nov 2027
Words at Bari training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Valerio Mantovani is at the centre of it, and the squad will now find out whether the standard rises or the pair of them simply stop speaking.
Player ratings29 Nov 2027
7.96, and no serious argument from anybody who was there. Bari had eleven men on the pitch and one of them decided how it went.
From our football correspondent
Steady
Squad22 Nov 2027
A knee injury of the worst kind for Danilo Colombo
43 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Bari lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Player ratings22 Nov 2027
Successful dribbles: 29. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.
Market22 Nov 2027
The general version of this complaint is that a player wants more. The specific version names the thing: he wants to walk out under floodlights against clubs from other countries, and he has stopped pretending otherwise.
Squad22 Nov 2027
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Bari this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Match20 Nov 2027
Still nobody has beaten Bari
The unbeaten run reaches 6. Some of them were wins and some were escapes, but a side that refuses to lose is a side other dressing rooms talk about.
Squad22 Nov 2027
Valerio Mantovani falls out with a teammate over standards
The oldest argument in any dressing room and the only one that is genuinely about football: one man thinks another is not putting enough in. It is also the row a manager privately does not mind having happened.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Market16 Aug 2027
Bari say no — this time
The offer from Novara for Lukas Grgić was heard out and sent back the same day. First bids are rarely meant to succeed; they are meant to find out how loudly the door closes.
Squad16 Aug 2027
Jack Grimmer gets the move he always wanted
Footballers are asked about their boyhood club so often that nobody listens to the answer. Jack Grimmer has just signed for Bari, and for once the answer mattered.
Squad16 Aug 2027
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Jayden Addai is 21, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
Squad16 Aug 2027
Tempers go at Bari
Domagoj Bradarić was at the centre of it, and by the time it was pulled apart there were three or four others involved. Training grounds are small places and long seasons make them smaller.
Squad16 Aug 2027
Antonino Gallo has improved at 27, which nobody expected
Careers are supposed to plateau and then decline, and the players who ignore that are always the ones who were listening on the training ground. 3 points of it, over months, at an age where the direction normally only goes one way.
Market16 Aug 2027
The academy exists for exactly this morning. Tiziano Bruno has come through every age group the club runs and has now been handed a senior number, and the people who coached him at twelve will be the proudest in the building.