Real Madrid’s Vinicius Junior has brought racist abuse directed at him as a player into the public domain 20 times, with so little support he now takes matters into his own hands
Tomorrow, a Brazilian called Vinicius Junior is set to play for Real Madrid in football’s top European club competition, the Champions League. His Spanish team will play the Portuguese side Benfica in the second leg of a two-match knockout stage game. In the first meeting, last week, Vinicius walked off the field claiming he’d been racially abused by one of the Benfica players, Gianluca Prestianni.
Prestiani denies the charge. The European football governing body, UEFA, is investigating. Vini’s team-mate, the France superstar Kylian Mbappe, has stepped up as a witness.
He has done so because it is the 20th time Vini has brought racist abuse directed at him as a Real Madrid player into the public domain. He has had so little support from referees and officials outside his club he now takes matters into his own hands.
Vinicius is a hero. He will go down as one of the great sportsmen of our time with his one-man fight to smash football’s worldwide complacency around racism. I remain one of the few journalists in the world ever to interview him at his home in Spain, at the start of last season.
I asked him whether he wanted that fight, given he was just 24 at the time. Also given it was the job of football’s senior officials to protect young Black men like him. Vinicius rightly pointed out that there are few, if any, people who look like him in influential positions in football, able to understand.
So he is doing it alone. For the players too worried about the repercussions (many believe he was overlooked for the 2024 World Player of the Year award because of his stance). Vini is doing it for the lower profile players nobody cares about. For the next generation of kids he doesn’t want to walk into his nightmare.
Players, managers, officials, even media in Spain still blame him. For being too exuberant. For doing the kind of dancing to celebrate his goals that we see in the English Premier League every week. They accuse him of lying, mishearing, deflecting – everything they can to gaslight him into standing down.
Benfica, and their manager, the ex-Chelsea head coach Jose Mourinho, joined that particular queue last week when – to widespread disgust – Mourinho suggested Vinicius was the problem, while the club issued a statement after the match contending that Madrid’s players “could not have heard what they claim to have heard”.
But Vini has names, dates and court sentences for the most recent perpetrators in Spain after prosecutors were shamed into taking action. It all became too much for him at a press conference in 2024 as the weight of his fight against discrimination took its toll and he broke down in tears. But he is not giving up. That’s why he walked off last week. Also why players here in England privately talk about doing likewise.
Since last week there has been an avalanche of disgust from the industry on these shores. Yet the English game is in no position to condemn other countries on racism. Its leagues won’t dock points for it. Managers and clubs will defend their players over it and the tut-tutting since last week is mostly performative.
Managers and ex-players keep claiming it is a societal problem, even though you’d be fired on the spot if you were racially abusive at your office, factory, school, college or university.
Current players are often advised not to speak out by agents, PRs and hangers on, all of whom will abandon footballers to deal with their trauma alone once their careers end. That’s why Vinicius is doing it now. And why players in England are prepared to follow. Football has had its head in the sand for too long.
