{"id":204782,"date":"2025-10-16T18:39:07","date_gmt":"2025-10-16T18:39:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/204782\/"},"modified":"2025-10-16T18:39:07","modified_gmt":"2025-10-16T18:39:07","slug":"maccabi-tel-aviv-fans-banned-from-game-at-aston-villa-in-europa-league-maccabi-tel-aviv","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/204782\/","title":{"rendered":"Maccabi Tel Aviv fans banned from game at Aston Villa in Europa League | Maccabi Tel Aviv"},"content":{"rendered":"

Fans of Maccabi Tel Aviv<\/a> will not be allowed to attend the Europa League match at Aston Villa on 6 November owing to safety concerns.<\/p>\n

West Midlands police said they had classified the fixture as \u201chigh risk\u201d, based on \u201ccurrent intelligence and previous incidents, including violent clashes and hate crime offences that occurred during the 2024 Uefa Europa League match between Ajax and Maccabi Tel Aviv in Amsterdam<\/a>\u201d.<\/p>\n

The police said they believed the measure would \u201chelp mitigate risks to public safety\u201d and that they remained \u201csteadfast in our support all affected communities, and reaffirm our zero-tolerance stance on hate crime in all its forms\u201d.<\/p>\n

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Villa said<\/a> the local safety advisory group had instructed the club that \u201cno away fans will be permitted to attend Villa Park for this fixture\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe club are in continuous dialogue with Maccabi Tel Aviv and the local authorities throughout this ongoing process, with the safety of supporters attending the match and the safety of local residents at the forefront of any decision,\u201d the statement said.<\/p>\n

The decision comes almost a year after there was significant unrest when Maccabi played at Ajax. A report by Dutch police into the disorder, which lasted two days, found that Maccabi fans had torn a Palestinian flag down from the facade of a local building and burned it, shouted \u201cfuck you, Palestine\u201d, and vandalised a taxi<\/a>, among a series of incidents before the fixture.<\/p>\n

In the hours after the match what were described by Amsterdam\u2019s mayor as a series of \u201chit and run\u201d assaults on Maccabi fans led to five people being hospitalised and a further 20 to 30 being slightly injured. Sixty-two people were arrested by Dutch police, mainly for public order offences.<\/p>\n

The Jewish Leadership Council criticised the decision not to allow Maccabi supporters to attend the Villa game, posting on X that it was \u201cperverse that away fans should be banned from a football match because West Midlands<\/a> police can\u2019t guarantee their safety\u201d.<\/p>\n

The group said: \u201cAston Villa should face the consequences of this decision and the match should be played behind closed doors.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Palestine Solidarity Campaign said the match should be cancelled, writing on X: \u201cIsraeli football teams shouldn\u2019t play in international tournaments whilst it commits genocide and apartheid.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Independent MP for Birmingham Perry Barr<\/a>, Ayoub Khan, added: \u201cI welcome the Safety Advisory Group\u2019s decision. With so much hostility and uncertainty around the match, it was only right to take drastic measures.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ajax were prevented last month from bringing fans to a Champions League match in Marseille after the French interior ministry banned \u201canyone claiming to be an Ajax Amsterdam supporter\u201d from travelling between the French border and the southern city. Ajax said they had been informed the decision had been taken \u201con grounds of public safety and security\u201d. That same week, the prefecture of Naples prevented the selling of tickets to Eintracht Frankfurt fans hoping to travel to their Champions League match against Napoli.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Fans of Maccabi Tel Aviv will not be allowed to attend the Europa League match at Aston Villa…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":204783,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":{"0":"post-204782","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204782","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=204782"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204782\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/204783"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=204782"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=204782"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=204782"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}