Hard-core Lazio fans want to ban women from 'sacred place'

Milan (AFP) – Die-hard ultra fans of Italian top flight side Lazio want women banned from their “sacred place” of the front rows in the stadium, according to reports in Italy on Sunday.

A flyer being attributed to Lazio ultras was circulated before the team’s opening Serie A game — a 2-1 loss to Napoli — at the Stadio Olimpico in Rome on Saturday.

“The Curva Nord for us represents a sacred place. An environment with an unwritten code to be respected,” read the flyer signed “Direttivo Diabolik Pluto”, one of the leaders of Lazio’s Irriducibili ultras group, which was circulated on the north stand which Lazio fans occupy in Rome’s Olympic Stadium.

“The first rows, as always, we experience them as if they were a trenched line. We do not admit women, wives or girlfriends, so, if this is the case, we invite you to position yourself from row 10 onwards. 

“Those who choose the stadium as an alternative to the carefree and romantic day at Villa Borghese (one of the main parks in Rome), go to other areas.”

Lazio’s ultras fans have often courted controversy and the club were fined 50,000 euros last year after supporters displayed stickers showing Holocaust victim Anne Frank in a Roma shirt along with anti-Semitic messages.

Bitter city rivals Lazio and Roma share the Olympic Stadium.