190: Maccabi Tel Aviv's sorrowful ban from Aston Villa plunges football into darkness

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A chunk of my background, both personal and professional, has been washed away.

I didn’t think football was supposed to hurt like this.

Banning a mere thousand or less Israeli football fans from Villa Park for a Europa League tie is a cause for deep sorrow.

But not just for me, an Aston Villa fan through my Holocaust-surviving grandfather who setup his typewriter shop bang next to Aston Station on the Lichfield Road, but for this generation of Villa fans and those to come.

Because football is supposed to be a thrilling, entertaining source of pride.

Not a dispensary for anger and shame, of imported hate and community breakdown.

Is the Beautiful Game still beautiful?

My generation and those that came before had the best of it. We enjoyed league title wins, European glory and trips to Wembley.

But it would have meant nothing without the communal joy and camaraderie it spawned.

And for this Jewish kid, it was a high voltage plug-in to the prevailing, sometimes overwhelming culture of my city beyond my upbringing.

So accepting they were of me, that by the age of 21, I was reporting my beloved team from the press box for the radio station covering the West Midlands and Shropshire.

When I returned as a national reporter to the old Trinity Road box years later, the stewards, dear old men, bowled me over with their effusive welcome back. Like that beautiful Archibald Leitch-designed stand, their unvarnished spirit is gone.

So this is my own very personal sadness about what football and the city that helped shape me has become.

The English game shunned politics, now it’s buried by it.

Snarling Islamist boycotters - an elected MP is trashing what was good here. For what?

They think it’s all over. It is now.

Find Jonny's writing and other podcasts on his ⁠Substack⁠. Buy him a ⁠coffee here.⁠

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