{"id":241983,"date":"2026-01-16T22:05:10","date_gmt":"2026-01-16T22:05:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/241983\/"},"modified":"2026-01-16T22:05:10","modified_gmt":"2026-01-16T22:05:10","slug":"british-police-force-chief-behind-decision-to-ban-maccabi-fans-from-aston-villa-match-retires","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/241983\/","title":{"rendered":"British police force chief behind decision to ban Maccabi fans from Aston Villa match retires"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao MvWXB TjIXL aGjvy ebVHC \">LONDON &#8212; The chief of the British police force that recommended that <a class=\"zZygg UbGlr iFzkS qdXbA WCDhQ DbOXS tqUtK GpWVU iJYzE \" data-testid=\"prism-linkbase\" href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/article\/maccabi-tel-aviv-aston-villa-fan-ban-95b6618944a36b2a8ab88766935be694\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">fans from Israeli soccer team Maccabi Tel Aviv be banned<\/a> from attending a football match against English Premier League side Aston Villa in Birmingham last year retired Friday following criticism of that decision.<\/p>\n<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao lqtkC TjIXL aGjvy \">Craig Guildford, the chief constable of West Midlands Police, will step down with immediate effect as the head of the force following mounting pressure for him to quit over the controversy. The development was announced by the locally elected police and crime commissioner Simon Foster outside police headquarters in Birmingham.<\/p>\n<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao lqtkC TjIXL aGjvy \">Guildford&#8217;s position has been precarious since Wednesday&#8217;s publication of a <a class=\"zZygg UbGlr iFzkS qdXbA WCDhQ DbOXS tqUtK GpWVU iJYzE \" data-testid=\"prism-linkbase\" href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/article\/maccabi-fans-ban-aston-villa-police-320439b1e2f3bc267528a95e85c89d4b\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">report into the decision to ban Maccabi fans<\/a> from attending the match at Villa Park on Nov. 6. The report found the decision last year overstated the threat posed by Maccabi fans and understated the risk to them.<\/p>\n<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao lqtkC TjIXL aGjvy \">Following its publication, Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood said she had lost confidence in Guildford and urged him to stand down.<\/p>\n<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao lqtkC TjIXL aGjvy \">Mahmood said she didn\u2019t have the power to fire Guildford as a result of a policy change by the previous Conservative government in 2011, but she was looking to reinstate that power to home secretaries. Currently, locally elected police and crime commissioners have that power.<\/p>\n<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao lqtkC TjIXL aGjvy \">The ban came at a time of heightened concerns about antisemitism in Britain following a <a class=\"zZygg UbGlr iFzkS qdXbA WCDhQ DbOXS tqUtK GpWVU iJYzE \" data-testid=\"prism-linkbase\" href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/article\/britain-manchester-synagogue-attack-knife-car-68a30390a6680100093874988b954891\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">deadly attack on a Manchester synagogue<\/a> and calls from Palestinians and their supporters for a sports boycott of Israel over the war with Hamas in Gaza.<\/p>\n<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao lqtkC eTIW sUzSN \">West Midlands Police said at the time it had deemed the match to be high risk \u201cbased on current intelligence and previous incidents,\u201d including violence and hate crimes that took place when Maccabi played Ajax <a class=\"zZygg UbGlr iFzkS qdXbA WCDhQ DbOXS tqUtK GpWVU iJYzE \" data-testid=\"prism-linkbase\" href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/article\/maccabi-tel-aviv-amsterdam-violence-protests-palestinian-401ddfbb8efb2e6e0841d759f5bf85bf\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">in Amsterdam last season<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LONDON &#8212; The chief of the British police force that recommended that fans from Israeli soccer team Maccabi&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":241984,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[130189,127,122,85,46,13596,43,7319,19711,105,126],"class_list":{"0":"post-241983","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-israel","8":"tag-130189","9":"tag-article","10":"tag-general-news","11":"tag-il","12":"tag-israel","13":"tag-law-enforcement","14":"tag-news","15":"tag-religion","16":"tag-soccer","17":"tag-sports","18":"tag-world-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241983","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=241983"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241983\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/241984"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=241983"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=241983"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=241983"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}