“Lazio Football Club positive measures have been ineffective against recidivist hate fans... innovative face recognition technology, like for biometric passports, must be employed at stadium gates.”

Paris, 18 April 2018

In a letter to UEFA President, Aleksander Ceferin, Simon Wiesenthal Centre Director for International Relations, Dr. Shimon Samuels, highlighted “the many years that the Centre has been monitoring antisemitism and other forms of hatred on the football terraces in cooperation with UEFA.”

Samuels recalled how “last October, S.S. Lazio football club abused the tragedy of Anne Frank (photo), the Dutch diarist of the Holocaust for an antisemitic attack against the A.S. Roma team, with which they share the same stadium.”

The Centre stressed its satisfaction that, “as a result, the Italian Soccer Federation (FIGC) called for reading aloud passages from Anne’s diary at all matches that week, together with a moment of silence for victims of the Holocaust,” adding, “Lazio President, Claudio Lotito, visited Rome’s central synagogue to declare visits for some 200 fans each year to Auschwitz to instil a horror for racism.”

Samuels lamented that, “despite the expressions of goodwill, yet again last Sunday, Lazio fans targeted the Roma team as ‘Jewish,’ with Anne Frank antisemitic chants – an act that should disgust all Italians, who share a collective memory as prime victims of Fascism.”

The letter registered surprise that President Ceferin had “shown reservations on employing ‘VAR’ (the new technology video replay system) at the forthcoming World Cup, in opposition to FIFA’s vote for its use in Moscow and despite its approval by IFAB, which is responsible for rule innovation in football”... arguing that “perhaps ‘VAR’ could be also turned upon the terraces to better identify recidivist fans bent at mayhem.”

Samuels recalled “facial recognition technology applied to football in the United Kingdom in the 1990’s, instruments that have surely advanced with the technology,” suggesting that, “like today’s biometric passport control at airports, passage should be much simpler at stadium gates, granting guards immediate access to offender archives.”

“This should be the highest priority for the implementation of UEFA’s project, ‘Respect 11 values’, stressing point 10: ‘Zero tolerance against racism... Football must be an example’,” concluded Samuels.