Adidas has been a provider of football kits since such
firms made it palpably clear that they were providing them (in the 1970s).
Indeed, Adidas were one of the first companies to do so, appending their three-striped
motif to the shoulders of the football shirts they provided, as well as their instantly
recognisable ‘trefoil’ logo to the chest (as distinct from the rather bland ‘3
bar’ emblem they’ve been utilising since the early 1990s).
Despite a visible presence on the international scene,
Adidas were not back then the dominant presence they are today, and this would
have been especially true in Italy. That said, by the early 1980s there were
three Italian teams of reasonable repute being supplied kit by the German
conglomerate: Hellas Verona, Torino F.C. and A.S. Bari. Verona won their
1984-85 scudetto wearing Adidas – and very nice shirts they were too – in an
association that lasted from 1983 through to 1987, whereupon the Veronese
switched allegiance to Hummel. Torino worked with Adidas from 1984 to 1988
before hooking up with ABM, winning nothing. But Bari got there first and
stayed with Adidas for the longest: from 1981 all the way through to 1997.
White football kits aren’t the most interesting and rely
upon a tasteful splash of colour, or some other quirk, to liven them up. Real
Madrid’s all-white strip was improved immeasurably when purple trim was added
in the early 1980s. Leeds United, who modelled their strip on Real Madrid’s at
Don Revie’s behest, found salvation by way of the wonderfully bizarre badge they
introduced in 1973 (and jettisoned for something more conservative in 1977).
Bari’s colours are white with red trim. It’s not the
most exciting of juxtapositions, but in the hands of Adidas it was made to work.
Their earliest effort adhered to the traditional format: three red stripes
running off the shoulder and the trefoil on the chest. In 1983 vertical pinstripes
were added – in red, naturally – to be replaced in 1984 with thicker,
horizontal stripes across the shoulders and thinner ones beneath. Then in 1985
– as Englishmen abroad Paul Rideout and Gordon Cowans joined the club – Adidas
reintroduced the pinstripes.
Or did they? That season – 1985-86 – Bari were furnished with no less than five different shirts: the default white, pinstriped affair;
a red, diagonally pinstriped shirt, presumably to be worn against opposition
wearing white (clubs were not obliged back then to wear their second strip away
from home); a blue iteration in case the red one didn’t suffice; a white,
pinstriped shirt with red shoulder-panelling and sleeves; a red, pinstriped shirt
with white shoulder-panelling and sleeves. It appears that those last two were
issued for the winter months, but why they were adopted at all I have no idea.
All these jerseys were pleasingly sponsored by Cassa di Risparmio di Puglia,
written across the chest in an arc to make room for the bank’s insignia.
Perhaps bored of these striated schematics, Adidas then
reverted to supplying Bari with an all-white strip (allowing for the three-stripes
down the shoulder and the sides of the shorts, the trefoil logo, and a red
collar) and would continue doing so for the next four years. The one constant
throughout all of this was Bari’s tidy club crest: a cockerel in
profile, rendered with modernist simplicity by graphic designer Piero Gratton.
In 1989 A.S. Bari gained promotion from Serie B into Serie A. The
following year they were hosting World Cup football at their new home, the
impressive Stadio San Nicola.
It was around this period that Adidas decided that their
three-stripe template needed shaking up. They proceeded cautiously, introducing
a variety of configurations, many of which ended up on display at the 1990
World Cup. The strange, fragmented design that adorned the shirts of
Czechoslovakia and the USSR, for example, must have been deemed a failure for
it was swiftly abandoned. Strangely, the top in which West Germany won the
tournament did not prove to be indicative of the direction Adidas wished to
take. Nor those provided for Yugoslavia, Columbia, or for the USA and Romania.
The shirts given to Cameroon and Egypt, on the other hand, became something of an
Adidas staple, worn by the likes of Olympique Marseille, Anderlecht, Bayern
Munich, and the Republic of Ireland (although not at Italia ’90). And then
there was what the United Arab Emirates were wearing, which was also what
France, Poland and Ghana wore, except France, Poland and Ghana hadn’t qualified
for the 1990 World Cup. It was this template that Adidas would use at Bari for
the next two seasons.
In truth this new wave of football shirt couture
rarely delivered – overly complicated patterns rarely do in this context. Yet
it somehow worked at Bari. In fact, Bari’s strip was pretty much identical to
that of the UAE and is almost impossible to describe. The body of the shirt is
white but the area covering the shoulders, and running diagonally towards the
neck, is red, except on the top of the shoulders, which is white save for three
red (Adidas) stripes sublimated over the top. Along the boundary between the
red on the shoulder and the white of the trunk there are three hollow parallelograms
running diagonally upwards either side of the chest, their outlines inverted.
Sleeves are red on the outer side and white underneath the arm. Shorts and socks are
white and exhibit Adidas’s obligatory red trim.
What really sets the kit off nicely, though, is the sponsor’s name,
Sud Factoring, all lower case, printed in what looks like Goudy Heavy Face. And Bari’s badge, positioned just below the clavicle
so as not to interfere with those parallelograms (as is Adidas’s trefoil
geometrically opposite).
Bari’s tenure in Serie A would be short-lived. In
1990-91 they finished in 13th place, four points above the relegation
zone. They had some fairly decent players – Giovanni Loseto in defence, Pietro
Maiellaro in midfield, João Paulo up front – and in ’91 brought in Daniele
Fortunato from Juventus, Zvonimir Boban on loan from AC Milan, and David Platt
from Aston Villa. To no avail. A. S. Bari were
relegated, Adidas hung around for a couple more seasons, whereafter Lotto filled
the void, and the shirt went downhill from there.
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