{"id":266291,"date":"2025-11-06T10:21:10","date_gmt":"2025-11-06T10:21:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/266291\/"},"modified":"2025-11-06T10:21:10","modified_gmt":"2025-11-06T10:21:10","slug":"politics-should-never-be-drawn-into-football-maccabi-ceo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/266291\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Politics should never be drawn into football’ – Maccabi CEO"},"content":{"rendered":"

The chief executive of Israeli club Maccabi Tel Aviv says it is “incredibly sad” away fans have been banned from his side’s Europa League match at Aston Villa.<\/p>\n

“Politics should never be drawn into football”, Jack Angelides told BBC Sport.<\/p>\n

Advertisement<\/p>\n

Last month, the local Safety Advisory Group – the body responsible for issuing safety certificates for matches – informed Villa that no travelling fans would be allowed to attend the fixture in Birmingham on Thursday after police raised concerns, sparking a major backlash.<\/p>\n

The decision became the focus of parliamentary-level debate and Maccabi later said supporters would not travel to Birmingham for safety reasons.<\/p>\n

“It became a political issue and we’re not a pawn in a political game, we’re a football club”, said Angelides after his squad arrived in the city.<\/p>\n

“Our strengths are running a football club and playing football.<\/p>\n

“It’s incredibly sad and I think it’s a concerning and a worrying sign.”<\/p>\n

Read more of Dan’s interview here<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The chief executive of Israeli club Maccabi Tel Aviv says it is “incredibly sad” away fans have been…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":266292,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[11184,64,63,6254,596,1119,34601,155616,84,155615,85],"class_list":["post-266291","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-aston-villa","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-europa-league","tag-football","tag-football-club","tag-maccabi-tel-aviv","tag-playing-football","tag-politics","tag-safety-advisory-group","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266291","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=266291"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266291\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/266292"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=266291"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=266291"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=266291"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}