Roma will have fans at Sunday’s game with Catania, but director Mauro Baldissoni insists current rules are “illogical.”

The Giallorossi and Inter won their appeals to suspend orders to close down sections of their stadiums for this weekend’s matches.

Roma will have fans at Sunday’s game with Catania, but director Mauro Baldissoni insists current rules are “illogical.”

The Giallorossi and Inter won their appeals to suspend orders to close down sections of their stadiums for this weekend’s matches.

The bans were imposed for ‘discriminatory’ chants, in Roma’s case for racist abuse aimed at Mario Balotelli during Milan-Roma, but are now suspended pending further investigation.

“The Federal Court of Justice wanted time to gather more elements of the case, so they will perform their own investigation,” Roma director general Baldissoni told Sky Sport Italia.

“Regarding the rule in general, we have to point out it is illogical. There’s no sense in punishing home fans for something that happened outside the Stadio Olimpico.

“According to our data, at San Siro 900 of the total 1,500 fans in the Roma section are not season ticket holders.”

The original rule was to play entire games behind closed doors, but that was adjusted to closing only sections where offensive chants emanate from.

With an away game, it becomes difficult to pin-point who is responsible for such chants when picking a section to shut down in their own stadium.

Italian football introduced restrictive rules on purchasing tickets, forcing fans to bring photo ID to a match, with the hope of identifying trouble-makers.

Nonetheless, the punishment of racist or discriminatory abuse still appears to be somewhat generalised and therefore very unpopular.

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