Suspended stand closure for Lazio after fans’ anti-Semitic chants

Lazio have been handed a suspended one-match stand closure for anti-Semitic chants by their supporters during last month’s derby win over Roma, Serie A said on Tuesday.

In a statement, Italy’s top football division said 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 added 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”.

A similar offence within that period would lead to the closure coming into affect alongside any new sanction.

Lazio, who are second in Serie A, said in the aftermath of their 1-0 win over Roma that they would ban three fans for life for anti-Semitic behaviour, including one who wore a now notorious Nazi message on his replica top.

He was a German supporter with the name “Hitlerson” and the number 88, a reference to the Nazi Germany slogan “Heil Hitler”, on the back of his top.

In January, authorities ordered the closure of the Curva Nord for one match following racist chants at Lecce which left France international Samuel Umtiti in tears.

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

That includes at cross-town rivals Roma, who were fined 8,000 euros for racist abuse directed at Sampdoria manager Dejan Stankovic on Sunday.

Former Red Star Belgrade, Lazio and Inter Milan midfielder Stankovic was targeted with chants calling him a “gypsy” by hardcore home supporters until Roma coach Jose Mourinho demanded they stop.

The Italian word for gypsy is often used by some football fans as a racial slur for players from the Balkans and eastern Europe, regardless of their actual ethnicity.

Serie A said that Roma had only been fined because the chants from the Curva Sud area of the Olimpico stopped after Mourinho stepped in to defend Serb Stankovic, who won the league, cup and Champions League treble under the Portuguese at Inter in 2010.