The Aston Villa soccer club and West Midlands Police faced renewed criticism after a Jewish communal organization claimed they ignored a proposal to allocate 500 tickets to British Jewish supporters for Maccabi Tel Aviv’s Europa League game, The Times reported Friday.
The game between Aston Villa and Maccabi Tel Aviv will be played in Birmingham on Thursday without away fans after the city’s Safety Advisory Group (SAG) cited security concerns.
According to The Times, West Midlands Police has said its risk assessment and guidance to SAG had not changed and that the away section will remain closed.
Despite widespread calls for authorities to reverse the ruling, Maccabi Tel Aviv said it would not accept any away tickets even if the decision were overturned, citing the safety and well-being of its fans as paramount.
However, Phil Rosenberg, president of the Board of Deputies, said in a statement to The Times that the communal organization had proposed allowing British Jewish supporters to attend the game, with a plan to transport them safely to and from the stadium.
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“We had sought to give Aston Villa and West Midlands Police the opportunity to disprove the harmful notion of ‘no-go’ zones by exploring the possibility of allocating tickets to our community safely,” he said. “In the end, they collectively fumbled the pass into their own net. While the police seemed willing to make this happen, Aston Villa ran down the clock, perhaps hoping this would go away.”
Illustrative: Celtic fans lift a protest banner about Israel during the UEFA Champions League playoff first leg soccer match between Glasgow Celtic and Bayern Munich at the Celtic Park Stadium in Glasgow, Scotland on February 12, 2025. (AP Photo/Scott Heppell)
The soccer club did not comment directly on the claim, but stressed that away ticketing is the responsibility of visiting clubs and that safety concerns were a key factor.
Unnamed sources told The Times that Aston Villa never sought to deliberately exclude Jewish fans, and highlighted the security risk of distributing tickets to supporters with no previous booking history.
The original ban on Maccabi Tel Aviv fans drew political condemnation in both the UK and Israel.
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer called the decision “wrong,” insisting the role of the police was to allow all fans to enjoy football without fear. At the same time, Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar described the move as “shameful.”
A number of British left-wing independent and Green politicians backed the ban, with some calling for the wider exclusion of Israeli teams from international competitions due to the government’s actions during the war in Gaza, sparked by Hamas’s October 7 attack.
A Maccabi Tel Aviv player kicks a ball during a match. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)
Birmingham was the scene of pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel rallies throughout the war.
The ban followed a series of high-profile incidents targeting Israeli teams and fans abroad.
Last year, Maccabi supporters were violently attacked by organized gangs in Amsterdam following a match against Ajax. More recently, pro-Palestinian protests surrounded Israeli national team matches in Norway and Italy, with police deploying tear gas to disperse violent groups.
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