Bari

Foundation

Bari Foot-Ball Club was founded in the city on 15 January 1908. Like the majority of early Italian football clubs, foreign people were involved in the foundation of the club. Amongst the main founders were German Floriano Ludwig, Swiss Gustavo Kuhn, and a native trader of Bari called Giovanni Tiberini. Originally, the club wore red shirts with white shorts; early on, they would play against English sailors at the San Lorenzo field in the San Pasquale area of Bari.

Although the club was founded early on, clubs from Southern Italy were not significantly represented in the early Italian football championships; due to that, Bari did not immediately participate in the early national leagues. During World War I, the original club became inactive before being reorganized in 1924 under the same name.

By this time, other clubs from the city had begun playing too, including Foot-Ball Club Liberty which originally wore blue and white stripes and were founded as a dissident club from the original Bari in 1909 and their rivals Unione Sportiva Ideale who wore green and black stripes and was founded in 1908. It was FBC Liberty who became the first ever side from the Province of Bari to take part in the Italian Football Championship; this was during the 1921–22 CCI season when the main clubs in the country had a falling out with FIGC.

The following season Ideale became the first side from Bari to progress to the Southern Italian semi-finals round but lost out to Lazio. All three clubs featured in the championship for the first time in 1924–25; while FBC Bari were relegated and ceased to exist again in 1927, Liberty, on the other hand, reached the Southern semi-finals before losing out heavily to Alba Roma.

Unione Sportiva Bari

During the 1926-1928 period, the whole of Italian football was changing and beginning to become more organized. Several mergers were taking place in Naples, Florence, and Rome around the same time. FBC Liberty opted to change their name to Bari FC and first used it on 6 February 1927 in a match against Audace Taranto; then, on 27 February 1928, Bari FC merged with US Ideale to create Unione Sportiva Bari. The US Bari retook the red and white colours of FBC Bari.

After the Italian Championship of 1928–29, the league system was reorganized and Bari was placed in Serie B. One of their players was called up in the Italy national football team that season for the first time, in the form of Raffaele Costantino; this made Bari the first Serie B club to contribute a player and a scorer to the national side.

Between Serie A and Serie B

The 1930s and 1940s were Bari's golden age, spending much of that time in Serie A, with a finish of seventh in 1947 being the best they achieved.

In the 1950s, Bari went into a sharp decline and an equally rapid revival towards the end of the decade to spend three more years in Serie A (1958–61). Stars of the team in this period included Biagio Catalano and Raúl Conti. The club returned to Serie A twice more in this period (1963–64 and 1969–70), with the latter proving especially harrowing with only 11 goals scored, the lowest of any top-flight club. In 1974, Bari descended to Serie C, finishing that season with only 12 goals scored and 26 conceded in 38 games.

By the late 1970s, Bari were back in Serie B and on something of an upward swing, narrowly missing promotion in 1982. They managed promotion to Serie A in 1985 and acquired English players Gordon Cowans and Paul Rideout, but they were unable to prevent an instant return to Serie B.

A return to Serie A in 1989 with stars including stalwart defender Giovanni Loseto, midfielder Pietro Maiellaro and Brazilian striker João Paulo saw a respectable 10th-place finish in 1990, their last season at the Della Vittoria. The following season saw Bari move to the San Nicola stadium, built for the 1990 World Cup, but by 1992, despite the signing of David Platt, they would be relegated once more.

Promotion in 1994 saw another two-year stay in Serie A with Igor Protti clinching league topscorer in 1995–96 season, and another promotion in 1997 saw the emergence of promising youngsters like Nicola Ventola, Diego De Ascentis, Gianluca Zambrotta, Simone Perotta and Antonio Cassano. This time, they managed a four-year stay in Serie A under the guidance of Eugenio Fascetti, despite his uneasy relationship with many sections of the club's support. The club has since had a generally indifferent spell in Serie B. However, having been near the top of the Serie B table for much of the 2008–09 season, they gained promotion to Serie A on 8 May 2009, under the guidance of Antonio Conte.

In November 2009, a take-over bid was rejected. A Texas-based company JMJ Holdings also gave an intent to take over in August 2009.

With Leonardo Bonucci and Andrea Ranocchia as centre-back and Barreto as striker, Bari performed well in the first half of the season. Eventually, Bari finished 10th. However, Bari lost €19 million in 2009 financial year, which meant Bari was quiet in the 2010 summer window and in the January 2011 transfer window, they failed to find a replacement of Bonucci and Ranocchia. The company recovered from negative equity due to an increase in TV income, as well as the sale of Bonucci (a profit of €6.45 million). Bari had a positive equity of €870,653 on 31 December 2010 and a net income of 14 million in the 2010 calendar year due to extraordinary income from selling the brand.

Bari were relegated to Serie B after the 2010–11 season, finishing 17 points short of 17th placed Lecce. During the season, manager Giampiero Ventura was replaced by Bortolo Mutti in a failed attempt to save the club from relegation. On 4 March 2011, Bari played its 1,000th game in Serie A.