Maccabi Tel Aviv have announced that they will not sell tickets to fans for the Europa League fixture against Aston Villa next month.
In a statement posted on Monday evening, the Israeli club insisted that tickets will not be able to be purchased from their channels.
It comes amid intense political pressure to reverse the decision to ban away fans from Villa Park for the Europa League match on November 6.
A statement from Maccabi Tel Aviv read: “The wellbeing and safety of our fans is paramount and from hard lessons learned, we have taken the decision to decline any allocation offered on behalf of away fans and our decision should be understood in that context.”
Just hours before, Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy had announced that the government would provide limitless resources to ensure fans would be allowed to attend.
Supporters had been told that they were effectively banned from the football match after a decision by Birmingham’s Safety Advisory Group (SAG).
The Aston Villa v Maccabi Tel Aviv match was classified high risk by West Midlands Police | GETTY
The group is made up of local stakeholders, including representatives from the council, police and event organisers.
They revealed that they had made their decision based on a ‘high risk’ of violence based on “current intelligence and previous incidents”.
Maccabi Tel Aviv added that the club believed that “football should be about bringing people together not driving them apart” and that it had “been working tirelessly to stamp out racism within the more extreme elements of our fan base”.
But the statement continued: “Unfortnately those issues are not restricted to Israeli football, and they are problems the sport has been grappling worldwide including in the UK.”
The decision to ban Maccabi Tel Aviv fans from supporting their club at Villa Park caused outrage in the United Kingdom, just weeks after a anti-Semitic attack at a synagogue in Manchester.
