Villa Park Photo: Arne Museller/CC
Villa Park Photo: Arne Museller/CC
Kevin Carnall, Black Country Socialist Party
‘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. But the whole debacle and media discourse around the Aston Villa vs Maccabi Tel Aviv Europa League match is new.
The Birmingham Safety Advisory Group 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” like they have previously, 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 violent, unrepentant mob looking for trouble with a whole community. Even the Tel Aviv derby in Israel on 19 October was called off by police after ‘violent riots’.
Despite Keir Starmer branding West Midlands Police anti-Semitic and Lisa Nandy spreading disinformation in Parliament, there are 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 where the whole allocation was denied entry.
Last year, Turkish club Besiktas refused to give Maccabi an away allocation and the game was played behind closed doors in Hungary. When Russia invaded Ukraine, its clubs were removed from all Uefa competitions but apparently if they had done the same to an Israeli team following the invasion of Gaza it would be antisemitic.
So come 6 November, 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 Keir Starmer and Luton Town hooligan Tommy Ten Names.
The police would probably ban away fans full stop if they could. Ultimately, the safety advisory group has actively engaged with a wide range of local partners and community representatives in preparation for this fixture and deemed it not worth the trouble.
‘Political symbols’
Aston Villa doesn’t come out of this whole situation in a great light either. When I’m seeing other giants of European football like Paris Saint-Germain 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 a summer tour of Germany in 1938 it was Aston Villa who ignored advice from the home office and refused to give the nazi salute, a day after the England national team had done so.
Pressure from the English and German government didn’t work then same as it won’t work with our fans now.