Bahia

Esporte Clube Bahia (Portuguese pronunciation: [isˈpɔʁtʃi ˈklubi baˈi.ɐ]), known familiarly as Bahia, is a Brazilian professional football club, based in Salvador, capital city of the Brazilian state of Bahia. They play in the Campeonato Baiano, Bahia's state league, and the Campeonato Brasileiro Serie A, Brazil's first tier league.

Bahia has won the Brasileirao title twice: in the 1959 season, defeating the Santos' Santasticos which contained figures such as Gilmar, Mauro, Mengalvio, Coutinho, Pepe and Pele, in the finals and in the 1988 season Bahia edged Internacional. Bahia has only appeared in the Copa Libertadores three times, reaching the quarterfinals in 1989, Bahia's best-ever performance. The club has also won their state title a record 46 times.

The 2000s have seen the club win only four state titles. Bahia was demoted to the Serie B in 2003 and demoted, for the first time ever, to the Serie C in 2005, spending two seasons at the bottom of the Brazilian league system. In 2007, they were promoted back to the second level, and in 2010 the club found itself back in the Serie A, after eight seasons. Bahia had played its home games with 66,080 people capacity Estadio Fonte Nova since 1951 but after a section of the stadium collapsed in 2007, the Tricolor played at the Estadio de Pituacu. With the reopening of the Fonte Nova stadium in 2013 as the Arena Fonte Nova, a modern arena built for the 2014 FIFA World Cup, Bahia resumed playing its matches there. The club's home uniform consists of white shirts with blue shorts and red socks. It has a long-standing rivalry with the Vitoria and matches between the two sides are known as Ba–Vi.

This page also has a version in other languages :  Баия (Салвадор) (russian)