Football
Ben Gladwell, Italy correspondent 9y

Lazio 'astonished' by claims over black kit in French newspaper Le Monde

Serie A club Lazio have hit back at Le Monde after the French newspaper implied that their all-black away kit for Europa League games was a problem for a club with "neo-fascist supporters."

Lazio, whose other two strips are blue and white, have opted to use the third kit in European matches.

Le Monde's article said: "Despite being quite a fashionable colour at the moment, is likely to be a little more problematic for Miroslav Klose's club."

The paper wrote that ex-Lazio player Paolo Di Canio "who is claimed to have fascist beliefs will be regretting that he is not able to wear this latest shirt of his former club."

The Serie A club condemned the article, with marketing director Marco Canigiani telling La Repubblica: "We're astonished by what Le Monde have written.

"Using the colour black was the only way we could have played in Europe while maintaining our usual identity because UEFA only allowed us to design a shirt with one tone on another.

"We would have liked to have played with the eagle design we had on our shirts in the league last year, but it wasn't possible because in Europe, it is considered as a logo and it would have infringed on the permitted standards.

"Paris Saint-Germain are one of the various clubs to have had a shirt refused [by UEFA] because it had the Eiffel Tower illustrated too evidently.

"I repeat, the only way we could have done it was keeping this tone with a very slight difference in the colours."

Canigiani explained that the club "did lots of different tests over the past three months until UEFA gave us the definite all clear."

And he said: "It had to be a dark colour because our first shirt is light blue and our second shirt is white, so we didn't have many alternatives."

Lazio will wear the strip when they face Dnipro Dnipropetrovsk on Thursday night.

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