The country's top two professional divisions will wear the jerseys Saturday and Sunday to back calls for the release of journalist Daniele Mastrogiacomo, kidnapped this week in Afghanistan, and Francesco Arena and Cosma Russo, oil workers held hostage in Nigeria since early December.

Earlier Friday, football star Francesco Totti called on the Taliban to free Mastrogiacomo, a veteran correspondent for the left-wing La Repubblica daily, who was kidnapped on Monday along with two Afghans while they were en route to the troubled southern province of Helmand.

Totti, whose televised intervention last year helped secure the release of another journalist seized in Iraq, said: "Free him. He's a good person as well as a good journalist."

The appeal by Totti, the Roma captain who helped Italy win the World Cup last year, was echoed by Rome's imam Ala al-Din al-Ghoobashi, who said Mastrogiacomo "went to Afghanistan to work".

"Islam is a religion of mercy and clemency that renounces violence," the imam was quoted as saying.

Al-Ghoobashi added: "We have the duty to protect him, and those who do not are not following God's teaching."

Mayor Walter Veltroni and the head of the Afghan community here, Esmaili Qorbanali, met with the imam at Rome's main mosque on Friday.

La Repubblica rejected charges that Mastrogiacomo was a spy for Britain, saying he "has no relationship whatsoever neither to military organisms nor to police or intelligence services of any kind or country."

Journalist Giuliana Sgrena, who spent a month in captivity in Iraq early last year, said that a televised intervention by Totti had helped her release.