What’s going on with fan disorder at European games?

Given Young Boys’ history, and the club’s last major relegation being in Manchester, there will be questions about why the club was free to have an allocation at Villa Park, but not Maccabi Tel Aviv.

Switzerland, whose teams played in 116 fixtures, is one of the worst-treated countries in Europe, ranking 44th out of 50 countries. Israel is at 37th position.

The Israeli club was banned from taking part in Europa League fixtures this month after previous fixtures had resulted in “violent clashes and hate crime offences”, West Midlands Police said. Birmingham Council’s Safety Advisory Group (SAG) halted away ticket allocations due to the high risk of attending visiting fans.

Of course, there were special circumstances surrounding the Maccabi game, with Villa Park being in a predominantly Muslim area and tensions over the Israel–Gaza war. Protests outside the ground before and during the match resulted in 11 arrests.

When BBC Sport asked whether the same consideration was being given to young boys, Birmingham Council said it would not comment on individual cases. However, it added that the ban on Maccabi fans was a unanimous decision following SAG’s advice to the club, based on a police assessment.

Young Boys fans avoided crowd disturbances during their probationary period, indicating that it may act as a deterrent.

But smaller fines seem less likely to account for incidents like racism and discrimination – even though they account for a significant portion of those suspended sentences.

That said, almost all of the 16 stadium bans pending enforcement are for racist or discriminatory behavior. This includes home matches behind closed doors for Croatia, Georgia and Romania.

But this week Qarabag were fined just €5,000 (£4,379) after at least one supporter was racially abused in an academy match against Chelsea in Azerbaijan on November 5.

Atletico Madrid were fined just €30,000 (£26,275) and given a suspended one-match ban for selling tickets to their fans for making monkey gestures and noises and a Nazi salute during a 4–0 Champions League defeat at Arsenal on 21 October.