Aurelio De Laurentiis is on the verge of delivering Napoli’s first Scudetto in 33 years, but Aurelio is not the only De Laurentiis enjoying success in 2023. His son Luigi, President of SSC Bari, has a promotion to Serie A in his sights.
De Laurentiis pulled SSC Napoli out of bankruptcy in 2004 and within three seasons, earned promotion from Serie C-1 all the way up to Serie A. Similarly, De Laurentiis pulled SSC Bari out of relegation in 2018 and convinced Luigi to take the reins.
“My son Luigi is going to deal with Bari. I convinced him after days of talks and discussions because he had never taken an interest in football up to now. One thing is for certain: Bari will not be an appendix of Napoli, but they will be run as a separate entity, with separate efforts.”
Luigi has proven his father right. Bari immediately earned promotion to Serie C, winning Serie D, Girone I in 2019. Luigi’s tenure in Serie C mimicked Aurelio’s. In the first season of the De Laurentiis era, Napoli reached the final of the Serie C-1 playoff, but were defeated by local rivals Avellino. Similarly, in Luigi’s first season in Serie C, Bari reached the final of the Lega Pro playoff, but lost to Reggiana in the final.
Both clubs persisted, both earned promotion to Serie B in their third attempt and both did it in style. Napoli won Serie C-1 in 2005/06, leading the league from start to finish. Last season, Bari were top of the Serie C, Girone B table for 35 out of 38 rounds, including from Matchday 7 onward.
Aurelio’s Napoli needed only one season in Serie B to return to the top flight of Italian football. Luigi’s Bari could well do the same. Led by Morocco international Walid Cheddira, who has only one fewer goals than league leaders Gianluca Lapadula and Joel Pohjanpalo, I Galletti are currently third in the Serie B table with three rounds remaining.
With their 3-1 victory over Reggina on Monday, Frosinine guaranteed themselves an automatic promotion to Serie A. Genoa are second in the table, six points ahead of Bari. Il Grifone are one victory away from securing the second automatic promotion position.
That leaves only one promotion position left, and, unless the third-placed team finishes 14 points clear of the 4th-placed team, that promotion position is determined by a six-team playoff. Though not mathematically impossible, it would take a minor miracle for Bari to finish 14 points ahead of Südtirol, Parma and Cagliari.
Thus, Bari will likely need to win the playoff to return to Serie A. However, they need only a single point from their final three matches to guarantee a berth in the Semi-finals.
Such is the structure of the Serie B promotion playoff: Quarter-final 1 pits the 5th-placed team against the 8th-placed team; Quarter-final 2 pits the 6th-placed team against the 7th-placed team; Semi-final 1 pits the 3rd-placed team (likely to be Bari) against the winner of Quarter-final 2; and Semi-final 2 pits the 4th-placed team against the winner of Quarter-final 1. Each of the Semi-finals and the Final are two-legged ties.
In Summary, Bari are one draw and two playoff rounds away from returning to Serie A for the first time since 2010. In a 2022 interview with DAZN, De Laurentiis confirmed that, should he lose his appeals against a FIGC law that prohibits the same family from owning multiple clubs, Bari would be sold. After the FIGC agreed to extend the deadline to own multiple clubs, so long as they competing in different divisions, to the start of the 2028/29 season, De Laurentiis renounced his appeals. Should Bari win the playoff, the De Laurentiis family would have no choice but to sell one of their two clubs. Perhaps by then, Luigi will be ready to take the reins of SSC Napoli.
