Roman soccer team’s fans want women-free section

Lazio’s notorious ultras have once again made headlines, this time by calling for women to be banned from a section of the Stadio Olimpico that the hardcore fans have described as their “sacred space.”

Issued before the team’s opening Serie A match — which Lazio lost 2-1 to Napoli — the flyer read: “The Curva Nord represents for us a sacred space, an environment with an unwritten code to be respected.

“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.

“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.”

Last season the club was fined after supporters displayed anti-Semitic stickers showing Holocaust victim Anne Frank in a Roma shirt. It was the latest in a series of racist and anti-Semitic incidents.