God I hate Barney Ronay.

So he starts off trying to do this paradox of tolerance thing, calling a bunch of politicians hypocrites for preaching unity while banning (violent and racist) Israeli hooligans.

He takes a detour to do a hatchet job on the greens party leader.

He slyly inserts the idea that the safety concern is actually a threat of terrorism against the Maccabi fans (rather than they themselves being violent racist thugs).

He downplays events in Gaza as “bloodshed” and “violent acts of war” rather than ethnic cleansing and genocide.

He tries this weird slippery slope rhetorical trick of saying “if we’re going to ban certain groups of fans because they’re too expensive to police, who won’t be banned? Who is next?”

He downplays Maccabi fans previous racist hooliganism in the Netherlands and says there is “no hard evidence” they will cause trouble.

Claims that apparently there’s a huge surge in antisemitic attacks in Birmingham without any source, insinuating that the police don’t care about that and are focusing on this instead.

Filled with “this is just causing more division” claptrap. Actually I would personally prefer if violent racial supremacists were divided from me and the people they want to victimise tyvm.

Somehow he thinks this completely undermines liberal democracy. I’m not sure Barney, if telling racist thugs to fuck off runs counter to liberal democracy then maybe that says something uncomfortable about liberal democracy? Idiot.

And he finishes by calling for the ban to be reversed.

Now coat the whole thing in Ronay’s typical self-satisfied sarcasm and smug sense of superiority and you have one of the worst pieces of football opinion I think I’ve ever read. It’s honestly just barely disguised Israeli propaganda. Absolutely disgusting.