2 hours ago
5
You could almost, almost have played it for laughs. If it wasn’t so bleak, or so profoundly unsettling. But then, this is Birmingham, so there does have to be some gallows humour buried in there.
Either way an hour before kick-off on the streets outside Villa Park it became clear that the 700 police officers present were being asked to keep apart three distinct, and equally energetic factions: pro-Palestine, pro-Israeli and pro YouTubers.
At times it was tempting to ask which of these groups represented the greater danger to the public, out there kettled into their designated spaces on Witton and Trinity Roads, the YouTubers acting as a kind of mobile cavalry between encampments, tangling with police lines, pressing the global cause of the content warrior. Would we see the first UK riot shield charges against teenagers with GoPros, subscriber-base war on the streets, fully weaponised clickbait?
So yes, you could have almost played it for laughs. If it wasn’t so fraught, tense and redolent of wider horrors at one remove. Opposite the Doug Ellis Stand there was something unavoidably disturbing an hour before kick-off in the sight of 30 or 40 pro-Israel … demonstrators? Not exactly. Old age pensioners? Mainly – being retained within a caged playground for their own safety.
It will of course be overplayed in some parts as an act of oppression, because everything must now be overplayed. Clearly the police had decided this was the easiest way to maintain control of a febrile moment. It seemed to work. But still, the basic optics of placing these people inside a steel cage was undeniably strange. We’ve found you a camp. You’ll be safe here.
Otherwise the atmosphere on the streets before Aston Villa v Maccabi Tel Aviv was tense, noisy, confusing and, beneath it all, undeniably depressing. The crowd milled and shifted, carrying with it a sense of wariness and rage at one remove. So this is what living inside the internet is going to feel like.
There has never been a sporting occasion quite like this, perhaps the most un-football football match ever staged in England, a groaning platter of geopolitics with a tiny little sprig of sport dusted across the top.
Arguably this was the most notable non-football match since Dynamo Kyiv’s Stalin-era tour of England, a series of games that began in a spirit of goodwill then quickly became fraught; and which crystallised George Orwell’s dislike of international sport, his dismissal of such occasions as “war minus the shooting”.
Orwell was sniffing out something that would turn out to be undeniably true. Although we have now moved this on. These days sport is war plus the shooting, a PR megaphone for hard power, marched about the place in a headlock by every despot and opportunist with an army at his back.
War and proxy-war follows the World Cup around as a natural next step. Earlier this week Fifa’s presidential popinjay Gianni Infantino revealed details of his new football peace prize, parroting the usual platitudes about empowering the peace-makers (who are also, as it happens, a very powerful bunch of war-makers).
after newsletter promotion
And now the Europa League gave us this, division, anger and suspicion on the streets of Britain’s second city, wound around the temporary armature of a football match. The banning of the Maccabi fans from this game has always been couched as related solely to fears of Israeli hooliganism. It obviously isn’t that, and it’s OK to say this because no one here is blind to the reality. The ban exists because a cross-border ethnic and religious war is being waged between irrevocably opposed sides.
So there were no Maccabi fans in the stadium as a room temperature game ended in a 2-0 victory for Aston Villa. There were none outside either, although a number of British supporters had made the trip. Two hours before kick-off a young woman called Emily walked down Trinity Road holding an Israeli flag, accompanied only by a hyped, rubbernecking police cordon, and was met with some isolated shouts of “Death, death to the IDF”.
Is it OK to shout about death? She was warned under the police’s special crowd control powers, told to leave the area for 48 hours, and left cheerfully enough.
In the main pro-Palestine camp on Trinity Road there were speeches, some calling for calm and tolerance, while also condemning the violent actions of Israel’s army in response to the violent actions of 7 October. Those present dispersed peaceably after kick-off. This was legitimate protest, expressed within the boundaries of free speech. The many banners about Zionists being unwelcome in the area, less so. Is this OK? Would it be acceptable in relation to any other group?
Otherwise the policing was robust, backed by dogs, drones and horses draped in Christmassy lights. There were some scuffles between fans and police, who seemed to mistake people with tickets for ground-invaders. A YouTuber called Young Bob was detained for refusing to stop broadcasting near to the main pro-Palestine camp.
At one point a man with a union flag tied around his shoulders was prevented from entering the ground (“You can’t go in wearing that”). Whatever your feelings about flags, which are in the end just bits of coloured cloth, it is undeniably a curiosity that this one should be such an object of provocation. But then, Britain is a strange country.
By the end there was sense of relief at the absence of serious flashpoints and flare-ups. The centre held, the lines were maintained. With any luck Birmingham will now get though the night unscathed. But the depth of feeling here was undeniably real, undeniably visceral, and undeniably strange.
