Defender of banned football fans at Villa, what say you now?

[ColadhSamh]

When Maccabi Tel Aviv fans were banned from their game against Villa in October there was uproar from politicians and many more establishment figures.
Some posters on here refused to acknowledge that the fans were well known thugs who had a reputation for racism, violence, attacking women, indeed doing whatever the hell they wanted to do as long as it was offending someone.
The accusations of the ban being anti sematic was a constant from some with a refusal to accept that the fans were guilty of anything other that being Israeli.

Guess what? These righteous, law abiding fans attended a game when their team played Stuttgart last week. They were beaten on the pitch and UEFA were not pleased with the fan behaviour. UEFA have fined Maccabi Tel Aviv £17,500 and given them a suspended away supporter ban due to "racist and/or discriminatory behaviour" The club's away ticket allocation ban is suspended for two years.
Shame on all those who refused to acknowledge the truth about these thugs.
Keir Starmer, Lisa Nandy, Kemi Badenoch, Karen Bradley and of course all their supporters on here.
Supporting and defending racism.

Well said.

There was a knee jerk reaction from politicians who confidently stated the ridiculous without bothering to look at the facts, and the intelligence gathered,

Some of the Tel Aviv fans are a disgrace, at Stuttgart, Ajax and in their own country so far this year. It's not 'Jew baiting' to say so.

Impeccable timing for this thread, not so long after yet another terrorist attack. Well done. Have a biscuit.

The bottom line is the Birmingham community dictated and were appeased. Did we imagine the police lying about the planning process of the policing of the event?

If you recall, Tel Aviv withdrew from selling tickets to their supporters in the end. So banning isn't even technically true. They are on a suspended ban now though due to their behaviour, and good.

That is true, and very odd!

This gotcha attempt really is a big fat fail. I won't be changing my opinion on the ban. It was employed with deceit and misleading data. The senior police officials are rightly being held to account. Now why did they lie? 🤔 apart from giving into a certain community?

The ban by the UK authorities was anti-semitic. The current ban is not. One was because the police couldn’t protect Jews from being lynched. The other is the normal UEFA response to bad fan behaviour. Different reasons for the ban, different motivations. One anti-semitic, one fair.

Not only antisemitic but also a massive con job by police. Adding insult to injury by putting words into jews' mouths to justify their two tier policing. Yes, it IS two tier.

Either way, it certainly wasn't Villa's fault, amd they got a lot of blame at the start for no reason. Actually the only people to have ripped up seats and caused bother there this season are Swiss. Who are now also banned.

I actually think it's possible to hold the position that the decision by the police was quite likely fueled by anti semitism AND that the fans are obnoxious and should have been banned some time ago.

What say you now?

What sort of sentence is that?

And as for defending racism - well you'd know all about that. Totally poisonous.

I think that's a fair assessment.

I may have missed it but I've not seen any recent mention here on MN of the ongoing Home Affairs Committee investigation into the decision making around this ban.

Some senior West Midlands Police Officers have been getting a bit of a grilling;

www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026/jan/06/west-midlands-police-insist-decision-to-ban-maccabi-fans-not-politically-influenced

To be honest, WM police have been dubious for years on many fronts, (Birmingham 6, anyone?) so grilling them is a good thing. As I said, they probably were anti semitic and overly influenced, but the fans were still awful so I was pleased they weren't there. It was always going to be a clusterfuck and all the teams that didn't draw them will have been sighing in relief. We just got the short straw. It was never going to go well.

Oh dear. This hasn’t aged well, has it?

😆 🤣 😂

I still think my view of both being wrong was correct, just that clearly the police were more wrong (and incompetent at that). Akd, as I said, probably anti semitic. AI for a game that never happened? Oh dear. He does need sacking, pronto. Some of the fans are still awful though. Just awful in a different way and not as awful as the most senior policeman in the WM.

Some of the protestors are more than awful.

Can't disagree with that.

Fair enough 👍

It's very concerning how much sway some communities have in politics and policing, and by that, I mean a variety of communities. It shouldn't happen, and this is probably just the most high profile and egregious example, but it happens at lower levels too. Seems unstoppable though when vote grubbing is on the table.