Italian football club punished with stand closure for fans’ antisemitic chants

By AFP 4 April 2023, 5:35 pm 3 Edit

Illustrative: Lazio fans cheer during the Italian Serie A soccer match between Napoli and Lazio on March 3, 2023, at the Diego-Maradona stadium in Naples. (Alberto Pizzoli/AFP)

Lazio has been handed a suspended one-match stand closure for antisemitic chants by its supporters during last month’s derby win over Roma, Serie A says.

In a statement, Italy’s top football division says that the sanction regarded the Curva Nord section of the Stadio Olimpico, from where Lazio’s hardcore fans made “boorish and offensive chants, which were also of a religious nature, directed at Roma supporters.”

The statement adds that the punishment was suspended for one year due to Lazio “assisting the police in identifying those responsible and… trying to prevent anything similarly deplorable from happening again.”

Lazio has some of the most right-wing supporters in a country where fascist fan groups are a widespread phenomenon.