ROME (Reuters) - Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi urged a crackdown on soccer violence on Wednesday after the latest outbreak of hooliganism left Inter Milan facing heavy punishment from the game's ruling body in Europe.
UEFA's disciplinary body will meet on Friday to decide Inter's fate after a barrage of flares and other missiles forced the referee to abandon their Champions League game with city rivals AC Milan on Tuesday.
The shameful scenes were an ominous warning for the authorities in Turin where Juventus face Liverpool in a high-risk Champions League tie on Wednesday, overshadowed by memories of the Heysel Stadium disaster in 1985.
A minority of Juventus supporters are threatening revenge at the Stadio Delle Alpi after 39 mainly Italian spectators were killed in Brussels following a charge by Liverpool fans before the European Cup final almost exactly 20 years ago.
Tuesday's scenes in Milan were only the latest this season to tarnish the reputation of Italian football which is campaigning to host the European championship in 2012.
Clashes with police at several grounds last weekend, the waving of swastikas and fascist banners by Lazio fans and a seemingly endemic racism among the hard-core "ultras" proved too much for the country's premier on Wednesday.
Berlusconi, who owns AC Milan, told Interior Minister Giuseppe Pisanu that he could use "drastic measures" to curb the spate of violence and counter "the risk of even more serious incidents" in the future.
CLOSED DOORS
Pisanu had warned Italian clubs earlier this week he might force them to play potentially troublesome games behind closed doors - a measure which Berlusconi now looks to have endorsed.
UEFA will be quicker in dealing with Inter, who can expect little mercy after being banned from San Siro for two matches after crowd trouble during a UEFA Cup game against Spanish club Alaves four years ago.
Inter were also banished from San Siro - which it shares with AC Milan - for two games by Italian officials later in the same season after their supporters threw a motor scooter from the second tier during a league game against Atalanta.
On Tuesday, their team were losing 1-0 on the night and 3-0 on aggregate when the missiles rained down, with one of the flares hitting Milan's Brazilian goalkeeper Dida.
UEFA are likely to opt for a closed-doors ban, with all fans excluded from several home games, matching the punishment meted out to Inter's Serie A rivals AS Roma after their Champions League game with Dynamo Kiev was called off last September.
Swedish referee Anders Frisk abandoned that game after he was hit by an object thrown from the Stadio Olimpico crowd.
Attempts are being made to improve the situation in Italy, notably with an experiment later this year at Udinese's ground to have a reduced police presence but plenty of safety stewards.
Barriers separating fans from the pitch will also be removed and there will be tighter monitoring of tickets, which officials hope will eventually bear the holder's name.
Such measures will not come soon enough for Wednesday's game in Turin where the police presence has been strengthened in the run-up to a tinder-box encounter.
Tension is already running high in a city where one Liverpool fan was attacked overnight by a group of Juventus supporters apparently on a concerted midnight hunt for trouble.
Turin authorities, who host the Winter Olympics next year, will clearly want to show they can deal with a potentially volatile situation.
