SELF-DECLARED fascist Fabrizio Toffolo shuffles across his smart Rome apartment with a pronounced limp.
The ?capo?, or leader, of one of the world?s most feared football hooligan gangs insists he is fully recovered from being shot three times in the thigh by unknown hit men.
Instead, he blames his hobbling on a recent tennis injury.
The boss of Lazio?s Irriducibili Ultras gang has gone to a neighbouring room to fetch a treasured light blue and white home strip signed by ?your friend Paolo?.
The marker-pen message from Sunderland?s new manager Paolo Di Canio reads: ?To Toffolo. Thank you from the heart. I will never forget.?
The kind words relate to the loyal support Di Canio received in his Lazio playing days from the Irriducibili ? or the Unbeatables.
Salute ... Di Canio in 2005
This is the Italian Ultras gang Di Canio himself followed as a youth before he became star striker for Lazio, one of Rome?s two major sides, along with rivals Roma.
Last night Toffolo, 48, claimed: ?My politics are a bit like Paolo?s.
?If you define fascism in the values of country and family, yes, I?m a fascist. But if you align fascism with racism then, no, I?m not.
?We need to preserve cultures and not force them to mix on pain of being accused of being racist.
?It doesn?t stop me having a black friend. I?m not superior to him, that?s stupid.?
Toffolo insists he and Di Canio have met 15 times, the last time in 2010. In 2004 he was pictured in the Ultra gang?s T-shirt.
?Paolo?s political beliefs should not stop him managing a football club,? the hooligan boss added.
Di Canio, 44, was forced this week to deny racist or fascist links in the wake of the furore surrounding his move to Premier League Sunderland.
?I am not a racist. I do not support the ideology of fascism,? the manager said in a statement.
Support ... Toffolo (on left), helps Di Canio into crowd at Lazio game
In the past, the coach admitted being a terrace follower of the notorious Irriducibili Ultras as a youth.
In a 2002 BBC interview the ex-West Ham star admitted: ?I remember one day a big banner appeared saying Irriducibili ? it was a new group and once I saw them I thought I?d like to support them because they are very good as supporters for a team.?
Sections of Lazio?s various Ultras gangs have a long and repugnant history of racism, violence and fascist ideology.
Neo-Nazi banners are regularly paraded in the Curva Nord, the Ultras? favoured portion of Rome?s Olympic Stadium, the home ground of both Lazio and bitter local rivals Roma. Fights with rival supporters and police are common.
Roma ? who traditionally have Left-wing supporters ? have been taunted in the past with banners reading ?Auschwitz is your country, the gas chambers are your homes.?
Another read: ?Team of negroes, grandstand of Jews.?
Last November, visiting Spurs fans ? a club with traditional links to London?s Jewish community ? were attacked in a bar with knives, knuckle dusters and baseball bats.
Toffolo says of the attack, that involved Roma and Lazio fans and left three English fans in hospital: ?Unfortunately we live in a violent society. It was an incident between fans and these things happen.?
Inside the Olympic Stadium Spurs fans were goaded with chants of ?Juden Tottenham? ? using the German word for Jew. The Curva Nord is today led by the Banda Noantri Ultras, with the Irriducibili exisiting in the background since the 2009/10 season.
Old Paolo home ... in Rome
Irriducibili leader Toffolo is currently facing charges of attempted extortion for his part in an alleged plot to wrestle control of Lazio from chairman Claudio Lotito.
He denies the accusations. When under house arrest he was shot three times in the leg but refuses to speculate on who did it. Toffolo is, however, happy to sing the praises of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini.
Known as Il Duce ? The Leader ? Mussolini was one of the founders of fascism and an ardent Lazio fan.
In 1938 Mussolini?s regime ? under the influence of Adolf Hitler ? passed anti-Jewish laws that banned them from universities and participating in many professions.
Di Canio has the word ?Dux?, the Latin equivalent of ?Duce?, tattooed on his arm.
In his autobiography he praised Mussolini as ?basically a very principled, ethical individual? who was ?deeply misunderstood?.
Di Canio added that the dictator had, however, ?turned against his sense of right and wrong?? after the early stages of his career.
Clad in a white Lacoste tracksuit, Toffolo said: ?Mussolini did good things. He was close to the people and built council houses for them.
?It?s not right that he kicked Jews out of jobs. But he must have done something right or we wouldn?t be talking about him 60 years on.?
Di Canio was fined and condemned by FIFA in 2005 for performing a straight-arm salute to the adoring Ultras in the Curva Nord for the third time that year.
Struggle ... Marco squats in old Paolo home
?It?s an ancient Roman salute but it?s obviously tied to Italian fascism,? explains Toffolo.
Di Canio explained the hand gesture, adopted by Mussolini?s fascist regime in the early 20th Century, saying: ?I am a fascist, not a racist.? He now claims he was misquoted.
Dr Matthew Goodwin, Associate Professor at the University of Nottingham, last night criticised those who try to excuse Mussolini?s brand of fascism.
He said: ?When talking about the need to extend the Italian empire into Africa or Yugoslavia, Mussolini was happy to employ the same racist arguments as Hitler. In 1938 his regime enacted racial laws that were explicitly discriminatory toward Jews.
?Not every fascist is necessarily a racist, but every fascist is fundamentally opposed to democracy.?
In the working class district of Quarticciolo in Rome?s suburbs, where Di Canio honed his skills on waste ground, locals talked of his political allegiances.
One elderly resident ? who would not give his name ? said yesterday: ?The area is traditionally communist but Paolo fell in with a minority of directionless kids. Being fascist at the time was an act of rebellion.?
Standing outside the crumbling tenement block where Di Canio was raised, ex-builder Marco Giginelli, 54, who now squats in the flats, revealed: ?Mussolini built them. We were all poor here, we all struggled.?
Di Canio has spoken of his late bricklayer dad Ignazio?s struggle to raise his four sons. His mum Pierina died last year.
Di Canio shared a bed with Antonio, his oldest brother.
?When I needed to go to the bathroom, I simply wouldn?t. Bed-wetting is something I had to deal with till I was ten or 11,? he once said.
Family members who still live in in the neighbourhood declined to talk.
Local bar owner Emilio Cambi, 63, said: ?Paolo?s a bit to the Right but everyone?s entitled to their own ideas.?
o.harvey@the-sun.co.uk
Benito bar's Muss-haves
Going Duce ... Oliver with Mussolini gifts
A DECENT goal kick away from the Olympic stadium is a bar where Right-wing Lazio fans can snap up their own Il Duce memorabilia while enjoying a pre-game drink.
Owner Pasquale Moretti, 78, proudly shows me calendars, wine bottles, flags and T-shirts all bearing Benito Mussolini?s image.
Sixty-eight years after the fascist dictator was strung up with piano wire from a petrol station in Milan by Italian partisans, this Mussolini mini-mart does brisk business.
Grey-haired Pasquale insists: ?The busts sell well to older people, while the kids like the sweatshirts and flags.
?I?ve sold stuff to important civil servants and Italian diplomats.?
A 1952 law forbidding fascist parties or encouraging fascism has never been seriously enforced in Italy.
His voice raised with emotion, Pasquale told me: ?Mussolini was really good for my mother and father.
?He built council houses and lots of hospitals. He asphalted roads and connected small villages to the rail network.?
Of Mussolini?s race laws, Pasquale says: ?He had to follow the instructions of that dog Hitler.
?Racism is pitiful and wrong.?
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