Soccer: Smoke flares allowed inside Italian stadiums

A top Italian court ruled yesterday that sports fans can legally bring smoke flares into soccer stadiums filled with thousands of spectators.

Matches in Italy are often disrupted when fans throw the flares on to the field, endangering players and causing large clouds of smoke.

Judges in the nation's highest constitutional court said that while throwing smoke flares inside stadiums was against the law, the act of bringing them inside the stadium was not.

The ruling was the result of a case involving a 20-year-old fan who was barred from entering Rome's Olympic Stadium after police found a smoke flare in his bag.