Supporters of Italian soccer team Lazio at Rome’s Stadio Olimpico. Photo: Reuters/Tony Gentile

Italy’s national soccer authority has launched an investigation after supporters of Rome club Lazio were filmed chanting antisemitic slogans prior to their away match last Friday against Napoli.

Video posted to social media captured around 100 traveling Lazio fans as they prepared to enter Napoli’s Stadio Maradona stadium. The fans gestured with fascist salutes and loudly chanted an antisemitic song in which they proudly identified as racists and insulted supporters of local rivals Roma by saying that their fathers were deported to Nazi concentration camps.

The FIGC, Italian soccer’s governing body, confirmed on Wednesday that it was embarking on an investigation, one day after it launched a separate probe into racist chants targeting Napoli’s Nigerian striker Victor Osimhen at the same match, which Lazio won 1-0.

Lazio, whose Stadio Olimpico stadium was built by wartime fascist dictator Benito Mussolini, has long courted controversy because of the antics of its fans.

In Oct. 2017, Lazio’s 3-1 victory over Inter Milan in Italy’s elite Serie A competition was accompanied by scenes of supporters raising their right arms in the traditional fascist greeting while chanting “Duce, Duce,” the title adopted by Mussolini.

In 2019, Italian prosecutors announced a murder investigation after Fabrizio Piscitelli — a leading member of the antisemitic, far-right Ultras who support Serie A soccer team Lazio — was shot dead in a park in Rome. Piscitelli was described as a “central figure” with links to a range of criminal groups.

In Jan. this year, authorities ordered the closure of the Curva Nord section of the Stadio Olimpico, where Lazio’s hardcore fans stand, for one match, following racist chants in a match against Lecce which reduced French international Samuel Umtiti to tears.