Undeniably strange and redolent of wider horrors at one remove, this was a groaning platter of geopolitics with a tiny little sprig of sport dusted across the top
You could almost, almost have played it for laughs. If it wasn’t so bleak, or so profoundly unsettling. But then, this is Birmingham, so there does have to be some gallows humour buried in there.
Either way an hour before kick-off on the streets outside Villa Park it became clear that the 700 police officers present were being asked to keep apart three distinct, and equally energetic factions: pro-Palestine, pro-Israeli and pro YouTubers.
At times it was tempting to ask which of these groups represented the greater danger to the public, out there kettled into their designated spaces on Witton and Trinity Roads, the YouTubers acting as a kind of mobile cavalry between encampments, tangling with police lines, pressing the global cause of the content warrior. Would we see the first UK riot shield charges against teenagers with GoPros, subscriber-base war on the streets, fully weaponised clickbait?
So yes, you could have almost played it for laughs. If it wasn’t so fraught, tense and redolent of wider horrors at one remove. Opposite the Doug Ellis Stand there was something unavoidably disturbing an hour before kick-off in the sight of 30 or 40 pro-Israel … demonstrators? Not exactly. Old age pensioners? Mainly – being retained within a caged playground for their own safety.
