{"id":499670,"date":"2026-02-23T22:23:08","date_gmt":"2026-02-23T22:23:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/499670\/"},"modified":"2026-02-23T22:23:08","modified_gmt":"2026-02-23T22:23:08","slug":"gianluca-prestianni-provisionally-suspended-by-uefa-after-vinicius-junior-racism-complaint-to-leave-jose-mourinho-without-benfica-winger-for-champions-league-decider-vs-real-madrid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/499670\/","title":{"rendered":"Gianluca Prestianni provisionally suspended by UEFA after Vinicius Junior racism complaint to leave Jose Mourinho without Benfica winger for Champions League decider vs Real Madrid"},"content":{"rendered":"

Prestianni will be prevented from coming up against his accuser when Benfica travel to Madrid on Wednesday, looking to overturn a 1-0 aggregate deficit. Sky News<\/a> report that he could \u201cface a minimum 10-game ban\u201d once full investigations have been completed.<\/p>\n

Vinicius said in a statement\u00a0<\/a>delivered immediately after his outing against Benfica: “Racists are, above all, cowards. They need to put their shirts in their mouths to show how weak they are. But they have the protection of others who, theoretically, have an obligation to punish them. Nothing that happened today is new in my life or in my team’s life. I received a yellow card for celebrating a goal. I still don’t understand why. On the other hand, it was just a poorly executed protocol that served no purpose. I don’t like to appear in situations like this, especially after a big win and when the headlines should be about Real Madrid, but it’s necessary.”<\/p>\n

Prestianni said in a statement of his own, as he maintains his innocence: “I want to clarify that at no time did I direct racist insults to Vini Jr, who regrettably misunderstood what he thought he heard. I was never racist with anyone and I regret the threats I received from Real Madrid players.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Prestianni will be prevented from coming up against his accuser when Benfica travel to Madrid on Wednesday, looking…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":499671,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[64,63,160118,6257,596,251348,22455,251349,85,69802],"class_list":{"0":"post-499670","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-football","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-benfica","11":"tag-champions-league","12":"tag-football","13":"tag-g-prestianni","14":"tag-real-madrid","15":"tag-real-madrid-vs-benfica","16":"tag-sports","17":"tag-vinicius-junior"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/499670","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=499670"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/499670\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/499671"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=499670"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=499670"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=499670"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}