This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

Lazio’s notorious ultras have caused outrage by telling women to avoid their “sacred space” in the Stadio Olimpico in a message written on flyers and distributed ahead of their team’s Serie A opener at home to Napoli.

“The Curva Nord represents for us a sacred space, an environment with an unwritten code to be respected,” read the flyer. “The first few rows, as always, have been experienced like the trenches. In the trenches, we do not allow women, wives and girlfriends, so we invite them to position themselves from the 10th row back.

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“Those who choose the stadium as an alternative to a carefree and romantic day in [Rome’s] Villa Borghese [gardens], should go to other sections.”

Lazio spokesman Arturo Diaconale told Italian news agency Ansa after the team fell to a 2-1 defeat on Sunday that “it is not the position of the club, we are against any discrimination.”

He added: “Moreover, there is an enormous number of Lazio fans, this instead is an initiative from a few fans. We can’t always intervene to avoid politically incorrect displays like this.”

CalcioMercato (En) (@CmdotCom_En) #Lazio ultras flyer in Curva Nord forbids women in first ten rows https://t.co/fzrE4xf3kf pic.twitter.com/jrZWdougob

Some Lazio fans caused outrage last season when they littered the Stadio Olimpico in Rome with images of Anne Frank, the young diarist who died in the Holocaust, wearing a Roma shirt.

Lazio were fined 50,000 euros (then $63,000) by the Italian football federation because of the anti-Semitism displayed by the team’s fans.

It was the latest in a series of racist and anti-Semitic incidents, with Lazio previously having their stadium fully or partly closed for European and domestic matches as punishment.