Fans of the Italian football club Genoa watched the first 43 minutes of their team’s Serie A match at home to Empoli in near-silence on Sunday to honour the victims of the bridge collapse.

An 80-metre-long section of the bridge, part of a motorway linking the port city with southern France, gave way on 14 August, sending dozens of vehicles into freefall and killing 43 people.

In the first match at the city’s Luigi Ferrarisstadium since the disaster, there was a minute’s silence before kickoff followed by applause for relatives of the victims, who were invited on to the pitch.

As requested by Genoa fans, the silence continued after kickoff, to the extent that it seemed the match was being played in front of empty stands, with only the shouts of the players echoing around the stadium.

In a statement before the game, the fans had asked for “a deafening silence of 43 minutes, one for each child, worker, student, father or mother who are no longer with us today”.

There were occasionally muffled cheers and applause when Genoa attacked but, even when the team scored twice in the first 20 minutes, there was almost no celebration in the crowd.

Applause broke out in the 43rd minute as the names of the victims were displayed on screens; the crowd then began singing and shouting as usual and continued for the rest of the game. Genoa went on to win 2-1.

Genoa’s opening game of the season had been called off last Sunday, as had that of their city rivals Sampdoria, who played their first game away to Udinese on Sunday.