Given Young Boys’ history, and that the club’s last major offence took place in Manchester, there will be questions about why the club were free to have an allocation at Villa Park but Maccabi Tel Aviv were not.
Switzerland, whose teams played 116 fixtures, are among the worst-behaved in Europe, ranked 44th of 50 countries. Israel are 37th.
The Israeli club were banned from attending the Europa League tie this month because of, as West Midlands Police said, “violent clashes and hate crime offences” in previous fixtures. Birmingham Council’s Safety Advisory Group (SAG) blocked an away ticket allocation because of the high risk of visiting fans attending.
Of course, there were special circumstances around the Maccabi game, with Villa Park in a predominantly Muslim area and tensions over the Israel-Gaza war. Protests outside the ground before and during the match led to 11 arrests.
When BBC Sport asked whether the same consideration was given to Young Boys, Birmingham Council said it would not comment on individual cases. However, it added that banning Maccabi fans was a unanimous decision after advice from the SAG to the club, based on police assessment.
That Young Boys fans avoided crowd disturbances during the length of their probation shows it can act as a deterrent.
But small fines for incidents like acts of racism and discrimination seem to fall short of the mark – even though they take up a significant proportion of those suspended sentences.
That said, almost all of the 16 stadium bans pending enforcement are for racist or discriminatory behaviour. That includes home matches behind closed doors for Croatia, Georgia and Romania.
But Qarabag were this week fined just €5,000 (£4,379) after racist abuse from at least one supporter in an academy match against Chelsea in Azerbaijan on 5 November.
Atletico Madrid were fined only €30,000 (£26,275) and given a suspended one-match ban from selling tickets to their fans for an away fixture because of monkey gestures and noises, and Nazi salutes, during their 4-0 Champions League defeat at Arsenal on 21 October.
