Maatsen and Malen help Aston Villa avoid more controversy in win over Maccabi Tel Aviv

For all the tumult on the streets surrounding Villa Park, it was an image inside that spoke loudest. The bank of seats that houses away fans in the Doug Ellis Stand sat empty all night and was a reminder that, from whichever angle you viewed a story that gripped the nation’s news cycle, there was nothing normal about what unfolded here. It was impossible to escape the sense everyone involved simply wanted the occasion ticked off and at least, from the hosts’ perspective, it eventually passed without serious mishap on or off the pitch.

Within the sealed container of Aston Villa’s home, those who had showed up succeeded in sticking to football. The loudest cheer of a largely turgid night arose when John McGinn entered, the match well won, to make his 300th appearance for the club. Earlier the local choirs had serenaded the block from which any Maccabi Tel Aviv contingent was absent, aiming chants at the vacant section as if exchanging banter with a domestic foe. A patchy crowd managed to summon flickers of good, innocent fun.

Villa had needed the points and ultimately eased through, via a scattering of scares, against a Maccabi side that had prepared by kicking its heels. Their manager, Zarko Lazetic, revealed they had arrived at the stadium five hours before kick-off to avoid being caught in the unrest that had been feared outside. “Sitting” was how he described their activity over that period. His team should have scored at key moments, the striker Dor Peretz twice allowing Emiliano Martínez to save, and could be credited for a proactive display.

Placards brandished amid the well attended pro-Palestine demonstrations behind the Trinity Road Stand, in full swing by 6pm and reaching crescendo when the match began, offered reminders many did not believe Maccabi should be here at all. This tie had loomed glaringly when drawn out in August, at a time when the clamour for Israeli clubs to be ejected from continental football was on the brink of getting results. Last month’s ceasefire has dampened that cause for now but the decision to ban visiting fans, reached after police intelligence raised concerns about extremist Maccabi supporters, ramped the temperature to new heights.

In the event, the much-signposted protests never quite boiled over. Around 700 police personnel kept a lid on what minor skirmishes took place, reporting six arrests before the match. One contingent of Villa fans was separated from demonstrators by officers as the groups traded chants. A counter-protest in support of Israel, just around the corner, was eventually led away from the stadium without any escalation. A disquieting, palpable undertone was confined to exactly that.

And so to the football, which was laboured and slow in the main. Villa, heavily rotated, were sloppy and ponderous until Morgan Rogers tricked through an obdurate Maccabi defence and was denied by Roi Mishpati. They had already been let off when a loose Jadon Sancho touch allowed Osher Davida to shoot, the deflected effort spinning just wide. A bigger let-off came five minutes before the interval when an untracked Roy Revivo centred for Peretz, who should have had a tap-in but succeeded only in locating Martínez.

Just as Maccabi seemed to be going in unscathed Rogers slipped a smart ball to Ian Maatsen and, from virtually on the byline, the left-back smashed an improbable finish beyond Mishpati and in off the frame. Now the home support, which had been ground down to low-level grumbles, had found something worth braving the cordons for.

“We conceded more chances than we planned and we made some mistakes, but over the 90 minutes we dominated,” said Unai Emery, who rejected the opportunity to comment on Maccabi’s unusual preparation. Another of those defensive lapses came 10 minutes into the second half when Hélio Varela blazed down the left and found Peretz, who took a touch 12 yards out before shooting too close to an alert Martínez when a goal beckoned again.

Teams in Maccabi’s shoes only get so many of those. Villa quickly sprang forward, Mishpati denying Malen before finding himself faced with the Dutchman again. Ezri Konsa was judged, quite harshly but with the backup of VAR, to have been clipped by Elad Madmon and Malen slipped the penalty away. “It looked like nothing,” Lazetic said. Malen’s third goal of the season was visibly welcome and a fourth would have followed before the end had Mishpati not saved brilliantly.

It got no livelier than that. Nor did it escalate further in that parallel world, a few yards beyond the bricks and girders, where the concerns of football, war and politics had all been thrust together. The protests had largely died down by half-time; a serious flashpoint was avoided and this stand-off will resurface in another location, involving a different set of fans, at time indeterminate.

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