Mayhem Behind The Masterpieces That Make Rome the Tifo Capital

When is a tifo not a tifo? When it’s a coreografia.

The truth is, the spectacular displays seen in grounds across Italy are all coreografie (meaning choreographies) but the term tifo has become widely accepted as a way of describing these remarkable shows of supporter passion.

Fans in Italy are knows as tifosi, which is derived from tifoso – the word for typhoid patient – and is believed to have been first used in a sporting sense about a century ago.

In his book Calcio, A History Of Italian Football, John Foot quotes Antonio Papa and Guido Panico, writing ‘sporting fans were linked to a kind of mental epidemic, which was contagious and produced forms of confusion, typical of the symptoms of this illness’.

It makes perfect sense when you consider fanatical followers of football.

So it also makes sense that the ultras are responsible for the tifos. They raise the money, they produce them, and in keeping with their ethos, they organise everything. Since a crackdown from the Italian Interior Ministry over the past two decades, the tifos have to be approved by the local police and authorities beforehand.

Scott is from England but has lived in Rome for many years and, as a Lazio season ticket holder in the Curva Nord, has seen his fair share of tifos.

He said: “The tifo used to be made in the head office of the Irriducibili (a far-right ultras group that was disbanded in 2020). Now it is Lazio Ultras.

“For the last home derby they and their helpers got the choreography ready the day before inside the curva. They normally arrive in a van as it’s quite far from their HQ.

“There is always a Lazio ultras stand with merchandise at Ponte Milvio (the bridge before the stadium and a hub for Lazio fans). And often guys inside are collecting money for choreography or for fans who have been ‘unfairly’ arrested.

“They are normally done in in private warehouses, garages, industrial spaces, but kept private. Obviously it needs to be a big space.”

So it’s easy to see how the Rome derby is about more than what happens on the pitch. The displays of the Curva Sud and the Curva Nord are as central to meetings between Roma and Lazio as the action itself.

From homages to former glories, to tongue-in-cheek mockery and a hefty does of historical references, the Eternal City has witnessed more glorious tifos than any other derby in Italy.

Here’s some of the best.

Lazio 3-3 Roma, November 29 1998

In July 1997 Sven Goran Eriksson became Lazio manager, returning to the Eternal City 10 years after leaving Roma. Six months into his tenure, the Swede was already a bonafide Biancocelesti legend after winning the Derby della Capitale four times in a season.

Lazio took the first meeting of the campaign in November, 3-1 courtesy of goals from Roberto Mancini, Pierluigi Casiraghi and Pavel Nedved, before Marco Delvecchio scored a late consolation.

Less than two months later, the Biancocelesti won the first leg of their Coppa Italia quarter-final 4-1, before securing a 2-1 victory in the return. Then, in March 1998, goals from Alen Boksic and Nedved made it four wins in a row.

By the time the Derby della Capitale took place the following season, wounds still cut deep on the Giallorossi side of the divide and the Laziali were all too happy to rub salt in them. A giant banner in the Curva Nord featured a military-style figure acting as card dealer, with a banner underneath reading ‘Fate il vostro gioco, noi poker servito‘ which translates to ‘Place your bets, we’re holding a winning hand.’

The key word, of course, was ‘poker’, which in Italian can mean ‘four of a kind’. Like Lazio’s victories in the derby.

Roma 4-1 Lazio, November 21 1999

Having lost four derbies in a row, Roma halted the slide the following term, with their 3-1 win in April 1999 ultimately going a long way towards costing Lazio the Scudetto.

By the first meeting of the next season, the Curva Sud reminded their rivals of their standing with a spectacular tifo. Again, the Giallorossi dug into the history books to produce a huge banner featuring Roman legionnaires against a yellow and red mosaic.

The message at the bottom read ‘You will never see anything greater on this Earth than Rome’.

The fighting talk in the Curva was matched by a blistering display as Delvecchio and Vincenzo Montella scored two apiece to put Roma 4-0 ahead within 31 minutes, with Lazio scoring once in reply.

Lazio, however, would have the last laugh, pipping Juventus to the Scudetto on the final day of the season.

Roma 2-2 Lazio, January 22 2015

One of the most famous Roma tifos in recent memory paid homage to the their historic captains, from the late Agostino Di Bartolomei to Giuseppe Giannini and, of course, Francesco Totti and Daniele De Rossi.

Each of them were portrayed on white banners against a huge red and yellow mosaic, with a banner underneath reading, ‘Sons of Rome, captains and talismans – our pride, one you could never hope to have’.

Simple yet effective. The spectacle off the pitch was matched by a brilliant contest on it, with Totti’s double cancelling out first-half goals from Stefano Mauri and Felipe Anderson.

Lazio 1-2 Roma, May 25 2015

The Derby della Capitale can be distilled down to two animals. Lazio’s eagle and Roma’s wolf going at each other.

Both curvas have leaned heavily into the imagery in the past, but never more spectacularly than the Curva Nord did in 2015, when a giant mosaic depicting a gold eagle against a black and blue background took up the entire end as the teams walked out.

It was a stunning effort but Roma had the better of Lazio on the pitch, with Mapou Yanga-Mbiwa’s 85th-minute goal securing a 2-1 victory after Filip Djordjevic had cancelled out Juan Iturbe’s opener.

It meant Roma secured a Champions League spot, while Lazio missed out on a seat at European football’s top table after losing a play-off against Napoli.

Roma 0-1 Lazio, November 6 2022

‘My love shall not die,’ read the banner unfurled by the Curva Nord ahead of the first derby of the 2022-23 season.

A poignant message under the profiles of three faces. One is Luigi Bigiarelli, the man who founded Lazio in 1900, and another is Giorgio Vaccaro, who is credited with rescuing the club from disappearing following the introduction of the Viareggio Charter a quarter of a century later.

The third wearing a Lazio scarf, represented two fans who died in very different, tragic circumstances, Gabriele Sandri and Vincenzo Paparelli.

Sandri was shot by police officer Luigi Spaccarotella, who was later sentenced to six years in jail, on the A1 motorway while en route to watch Lazio take on Inter Milan at San Siro in November 2007. There had been trouble between rival fans at a service station and the car Sandri was in when he was hit was about to drive away.

Paparelli’s death in October 1979, meanwhile, marked arguably the darkest page of the Derby della Capitale. A father of two, he was not supposed to attend the fixture and only did so after his brother, who could not make it, passed on his ticket in the Curva Nord.

Shortly before kick-off, Roma fans in the Curva Sud launched three nautical flares in the direction of the Lazio fans at the opposite end of the ground. The first two didn’t get anywhere near their intended target, but the third hit Paparelli through his left eye, killing him instantly.

As news spread of the incident, Biancocelesti fans tried to invade the pitch to halt the game and only the intervention of then-Lazio captain Pino Wilson and star striker Bruno Giordano convinced them to allow the fixture to continue.

Giovanni Fiorillo, the 18-year-old Roma supporter who had launched the flare, fled to Switzerland in the aftermath but returned to Italy two years later and was sentenced to seven years in prison.

Lazio Roma 1-1, April 13 2025

The Curva Sud paid homage to the late Di Bartolomei, who played 237 Serie A matches with the Giallorossi between 1972 and 1984, winning the Scudetto in his penultimate season with the club.

A huge display of Di Bartolomei occupied most of the curva, surrounded by an arrangement of 20 different Roma kits, with a banner at the bottom reading, ‘Una Città, Una Maglia‘ which translates to ‘One city, One shirt’.

At the other end of the ground, the Curva Nord responded with a display featuring Rome’s best known landmarks from the Colosseum to the Roman Forum and Sant Angelo Castle cast against a light blue sky, a not-so-subtle note to the club colours.

Lazio 0-1 Roma – September 21 2025

The Curva Nord once again leaned heavily into identity and roots with a recent tifo, depicting a young kid in a classic Lazio shirt holding an old-fashioned football under his arm and the eagle that appears on the club’s crest.

Running underneath the tifo, a banner read, ‘Back the tradition’, a nod to the notion that fandom is something that gets handed down through generations, regardless of passing trends.

At the opposite end, the Curva Sud with a cartoonish wolf, a nod to the animal on the club’s badge and a message reading, ‘Take heart, Lupetto, attack more and tear them apart’.

And while the Giallorossi didn’t exactly tear Lazio to shreds, Lorenzo Pellegrini’s first-half goal proved enough to win the derby.

It was at this game that Roma fans had a picture of Mr Bean as a Lazio fan, on display while Gianluca Mancini celebrated his side’s win.