What’s going on with fan disturbance at the European Games?

Given Young Boys’ history, and that the club’s last major offense occurred in Manchester, there will be questions as to why the club was given the freedom to take an allotment at Villa Park but Maccabi Tel Aviv was not.

Switzerland, whose teams played 116 matches, is among the worst-behaved countries in Europe, ranking 44th out of 50 countries. Israel is ranked 37th.

The Israeli club was banned from this month’s Europa League match due to, as West Midlands Police said, “violent clashes and hate crimes” at previous matches. Birmingham Council’s Safety Advisory Group (SAG) has banned the allocation of away tickets due to the high risk of visiting fans attending.

There is no doubt that special circumstances surrounded the Maccabi match, as Villa Park was played in an area inhabited by a Muslim majority, in addition to the tensions resulting from the war between Israel and Gaza. Protests outside the stadium before and during the match led to the arrest of 11 people.

When BBC Sport asked whether the same attention had been paid to Young Boys, Birmingham Council said it would not comment on individual cases. However, it added that the Maccabi fan ban was a unanimous decision following advice from the club’s SAG, based on a police assessment.

That Young Boys fans avoided crowd disturbances during the probation period shows it can act as a deterrent.

But small fines for incidents such as acts of racism and discrimination appear to fall short – even though they occupy a large proportion of those suspended sentences.

However, almost all of the 16 stadium bans awaiting implementation have been due to racist or discriminatory behaviour. This includes home matches behind closed doors for Croatia, Georgia and Romania.

But this week Karabağ was fined just €5,000 (£4,379) after at least one fan allegedly racially abused them in the academy’s match against Chelsea in Azerbaijan on November 5.

Atletico Madrid were fined just €30,000 (£26,275) and given a one-match suspended ticket sale to their fans for monkey movements, noise and Nazi salutes, during their 4-0 Champions League defeat to Arsenal on 21 October.