What is particularly striking about this particular story, though, is how it echoes the efforts of some conservative Muslim-majority countries to restrict women’s access to football stadiums. It was only in January this year that women in Saudi Arabia were allowed to spectate at a football match for the first time – and they were still required to sit in ‘family seating’.

In Iran, meanwhile, women’s attendance at football matches has long been strictly suppressed. Women have been refused entry to sports arenas since the 1979 Islamic revolution, and there are several recent examples of dozens of women being detained for trying to enter a football stadium – prompting some to disguise themselves as men to get past security. While some women were allowed inside Tehran’s Azadi stadium for the first time during the World Cup this summer, that was only a temporary reprieve on Iranian football’s no-women policy.

What does all this tell us? That all religions and political affiliations have pockets of misogyny. Some are undoubtedly deeper than others – but fascists are on shaky ground when they attempt to paint Islam as inherently anti-women.

On Monday (20 August), police in Rome said they had identified some of the Lazio fans responsible for the latest flyers, and that the authors could face discrimination charges. Let’s hope they’re made an example of – because this kind of sexism shouldn’t be tolerated in 2018.

Images: Getty Images

Far-right football fans want to ban women from their stadium’s “sacred space”