This Tuesday’s Benfica – Real Madrid Champions League game stopped for 10 minutes shaken by racism in football. What no one denies about what happened in Lisbon is that the Portuguese team player Gianluca Prestianni covered his mouth with his shirt, at least three times, to say something to Vinicius, according to television images. The referee, Frenchman François Letexier, immediately activated the anti-racism protocol as soon as the Brazilian reported what, according to his testimony, he received from the Argentine. Now it is UEFA’s turn, which contemplates in its disciplinary code a sanction of at least ten games for this reason.
The highest body of European football, promoter of the competition and very sensitive to this problem, announced this Wednesday that it had appointed an Ethics and Disciplinary inspector to investigate the case after reviewing the reports of the matches played. Benfiquista’s nervousness in the corridors of the Da Luz stadium was only evident by the seriousness of Vini’s complaint, later amplified by the words of Kylian Mbappé. “He has called him a monkey five times. I heard it and so did other Benfica players,” the Frenchman said. The entity’s first line of defense, faced with the undeniable fact that Prestianni addressed Vinicius covering his mouth, was to try to demonstrate that the Madrid players, given the distance on the field, could not hear anything.
The club, after two in the morning Portuguese time (one more in Spain), published a tweet with a video showing a verbal exchange between Prestianni and Vini. “As the images show, given the distance, the Real Madrid players could not hear what they say they heard,” Benfica said. In that scene, you can also see how the Argentine raises his arms before seeing the referee make the anti-racism protocol signal. And, in any case, that was not the only moment in the entire sequence in which Prestianni covers his mouth to say something to the Brazilian. This Wednesday, Benfica, when asked by this newspaper, declined to make further comments. UEFA will also study the fall of objects onto the grass, something highly punished by the European federation.
For its part, Madrid reported that it was “analyzing the formal complaints it must make to UEFA,” although it faces the difficulty of finding audiovisual evidence about what Gianluca Prestianni said to Vinicius. The entity did want to encapsulate the case to an episode caused by the Argentine player and thus prevent this event from causing an institutional clash with Benfica and its fans. He also downplayed an alleged scuffle between the local president, Rui Costa, and staff of the white expedition in the hallways of the stadium, according to various information and images from CBS television.
Benfica president Rui Costa almost came to blows with a member of the Real Madrid delegation after the match.
Benfica has denied that this happened. CBS cameras captured the moment of the crash.
— Albert Ortega (@AlbertOrtegaES1)
In a post-match full of tension, , who will not sit on the Bernabéu bench next week after being sent off, presented himself as a person with a “balanced” speech (“each one—Vini and Prestianni—says one thing”), but he did target the Madrid player with his words. His celebration of the goal made him ugly and he slipped in a sibylline way that this always happens to him. “It happens in so many stadiums, always with the same thing… There is something that doesn’t work,” he said.
Infantino’s reaction
“I was shocked and saddened to see the alleged incident of racism towards Vinícius,” FIFA president Gianni Infantino reacted this Wednesday. “There is absolutely no place for racism in our sport or in society; we need all relevant stakeholders to take action and hold those responsible to account. At FIFA we are committed to ensuring that players, referees and fans are respected and protected, and that appropriate action is taken when incidents occur,” added the manager, who congratulated the referee for activating the protocol.
When FIFA introduced the cross gesture with the arms in May 2024 to activate the anti-racism protocol, it did so only thinking about offenses from the stands. In fact, the next step is for the stadium’s public address system to broadcast a message to inform the public of the reason why the match has been stopped, and to explain that, if the attack persists, the match will be suspended.
The signal is part of a global strategy unanimously approved by the 211 national federations at the 74th FIFA Congress after a meeting in 2023 between Infantino and Vinicius. They met in Barcelona a month after the Brazilian from Madrid at Mestalla after receiving racist insults from some spectators. At that meeting, the president of FIFA was very firm: “If there is racism, there is no football. Let’s stop the matches.”
The leader went further: “We want to identify the racists in the stadiums and on the networks. They are criminals. We have to fight them outside the stadiums. We must prohibit their entry. The authorities have to take these people to court and we are going to convey it to everyone. Racism is a crime.”
One of the five points of the strategy approved by FIFA a year after its meeting with Vinicius refers to this criminal procedure: “We will promote racism to be recognized as a crime in all countries of the world and, where it already is, we will promote that it be judged and punished with the seriousness it deserves.” A few weeks later, Infantino celebrated the ruling that sentenced three fans who had uttered racist insults against Vinicius in Mestalla to eight months in prison and two years without entering a stadium: “This sentence illustrates one of the five pillars of action of FIFA: criminal cases. We, united as world football, will press for racism to be recognized as a criminal offense in all countries and, as seen today in Spain, when a crime occurs, we will press for it to be treated with the severity it deserves.”
In Portugal, where Prestianni’s alleged insult occurred, precisely to the Brazilian, racism is included in article 240 of the penal code, with various punishments depending on its severity, starting from six months in prison.
Both FIFA and UEFA have always thought about the public when establishing their protocols. Despite this, the European body treats racism in article 14 of its disciplinary code: “Any entity or person subject to these rules that insults the human dignity of a person or group of people, for any reason, such as their skin color, race, religion, ethnic origin, gender or sexual orientation, will be punished with a suspension of at least ten games or a specified period of time, or any other appropriate sanction.”
