Amsterdam’s mayor Femke Halsema was embroiled in a war of words with European football’s governing body Uefa over her decision to ban fans of Italian club Lazio from Ajax’s home stadium in December.

Uefa wrote to the mayor protesting at the “draconian” decision, pointing out that 3,000 Lazio fans had already booked flights and hotels ahead of the Europa League match against Ajax on December 12.

Halsema hit back, accusing Uefa of not taking its own anti-racism policies seriously, given the reputation of some Lazio fans for their “anti-Semitic and discriminatory utterances in Europe in recent years”.

“If Uefa says football is more than a game, and that it can be a force for good, that brings a social responsibility with it,” she wrote.

But the governing body said her decision was “mainly based on generalisations about the visiting club instead of a risk analysis based on intelligence”. It also said the mayor was moralising and misrepresenting its stance on racism.

In correspondence revealed by the Parool newspaper on Wednesday, Uefa’s deputy secretary-general Giorgio Marchetti complained that the governing body had “not been formally consulted for the communication of this decision at any stage”.

Maccabi street clashes

At the time Halsema was under fire for her handling of the previous home match between Ajax and the Israeli club Maccabi Tel Aviv, which led to street violence and accusations of a “pogrom” on the streets of Amsterdam.

Maccabi fans were chased through the streets by gangs of youths after the game, while prime minister Dick Schoof condemned the “anti-Semitic attacks” and the junior minister for integration, Jurgen Nobel, claimed the incidents reflected an “integration problem” among Dutch Muslim youths.

It soon emerged that Maccabi fans had been causing trouble before the game, pulling down a Palestinian flag from a building and singing songs about the deaths of children in Gaza.

The prosecution service has drawn up a list of 122 people it wants to charge in connection with the violence, including 10 Israeli fans.