Always the Villains. We’re used to being on the back pages but the front pages is rarer. Football fans misbehaving isn’t new. Football fans being banned from venues isn’t new. The whole debacle and media discourse around the Villa Vs Maccabi Tel Aviv match is new.
The Police advisory board and West Midlands police agreed that after the rampage and islamophobic behaviour by the Maccabi fans in Amsterdam last season they couldn’t guarantee the safety of fans for the match. If the Maccabi fans sang about “no schools in left in Gaza” or “f*ck the Arabs” the local community around Villa Park would take offence and rightly so. It wouldn’t be two sets of rival football fans having a ding dong. It would be a very violent, unrepentant mob looking for trouble with a whole community.
Despite Keir Starmer branding West Midlands Police anti-Semitic and Lisa Nandy spreading disinformation in Parliament there’s numerous clubs who have banned away fans. When Legia Warsaw rocked up at Villa in 2023 they demanded an extra thousand tickets and kicked off with police in the coach park to the point the whole allocation were denied entry. Besiktas have refused to give Maccabi an away allocation this season and the game is being played behind closed doors in Hungary.
When Russia invaded Ukraine their clubs were removed from all Uefa competitions but apparently if they did the same to an Israeli team following the invasion of Gaza its anti-Semitic. But fans of Tottenham Hotspur, a club with a proud Jewish heritage, safely visit Villa Park every season.
So come November 6th I’ll be sat in the North stand lower opposite an empty away end - as it should be. Although it would be a nice gesture from the club if they allow the two biggest Maccabi fans I know of to sit there, Arsenal corporate box regular Kier Starmer and Luton hooligan Tommy Ten Names.
Our government should have no say in this decision at all. The police would ban away fans full stop if they could. Ultimately the safety advisory group have actively engaged with a wide range of local partners and community representatives in preparation for this fixture and deemed it not worth the trouble.
Aston Villa don’t come out of this whole situation in a great light either. When I’m seeing other giants of European football like PSG and Galatasaray unfurling giant tifos in support of Palestine I don’t expect Villa to be threatening me with expulsion from the ground for wearing a Free Palestine shirt. It seems most English clubs are a few steps behind our European neighbours, with Villa warning fans against “displaying political symbols, messages, or flags during the upcoming Europa League match”. It will be interesting to see if anyone gets thrown out for wearing poppies at Villa vs Bournemouth three days after the Maccabi match. Common sense tells me we should be allowed to wear both or neither. Football is nothing without the fans and we shouldn’t be threatened with expulsion for supporting what we believe in as well as our team.
Aston Villa have always had a proud history of standing up to racism of all kinds. During the summer tour of Germany in 1938 it was Aston Villa who ignored advice from the home office and refused to give the nazi salute. Pressure from the English and German government didn’t work then same as it won’t work with our fans now.