{"id":506416,"date":"2026-02-27T00:20:07","date_gmt":"2026-02-27T00:20:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/506416\/"},"modified":"2026-02-27T00:20:07","modified_gmt":"2026-02-27T00:20:07","slug":"benfica-deny-report-prestianni-admitted-racist-abuse-of-vini","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/506416\/","title":{"rendered":"Benfica deny report Prestianni admitted racist abuse of Vini"},"content":{"rendered":"

Benfica<\/a> have categorically denied that Gianluca Prestianni<\/a> admitted to his teammates he racially abused Real Madrid’s Vin\u00edcius J\u00fanior<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Portuguese media had reported the Argentinian winger, who denies the accusation, had confessed his guilt to the rest of the squad.<\/p>\n

– Vin\u00edcius Jr. seals Real Madrid progress amid Benfica boos<\/a>
– Tchouam\u00e9ni: Prestianni suspension ‘victory’ for all<\/a><\/p>\n

However, his club insisted that was not the case.<\/p>\n

“Benfica categorically denies that player Prestianni communicated to the squad or the club’s management that he had uttered a racist insult against Real Madrid<\/a> player Vin\u00edcius J\u00fanior,” said a statement.<\/p>\n

“As has already been made public, the player apologised to his teammates for the incident that occurred during the match against Real Madrid, regretting its magnitude and consequences and assuring everyone, as he has done from the very beginning, that he is not racist.”<\/p>\n

Gianluca Prestianni has denied racially abusing\u00a0Vin\u00edcius J\u00fanior.\u00a0Photo by Valter Gouveia\/Sports Press Photo\/Getty Images.<\/p>\n

Prestianni was provisionally suspended for Wednesday’s Champions League playoff defeat against Madrid after Vin\u00edcius alleged he was racially abused by the Argentinian in the first leg.<\/p>\n

Madrid forward Kylian Mbapp\u00e9<\/a> gave an extensive account of what he had seen and heard to the media after the game, saying that he personally had heard Prestianni racially abuse Vin\u00edcius five times.<\/p>\n

“I heard it,” Mbapp\u00e9 said. “There are Benfica players that also heard it.”<\/p>\n

ESPN has reported<\/a> that Prestianni told UEFA investigators that he called Vin\u00edcius an anti-gay slur, rather than a racist slur.<\/p>\n

Last week’s match was halted for nearly 10 minutes after the referee installed the anti-racism protocol following Vin\u00edcius’ complaint to him.<\/p>\n

Vin\u00edcius scored an 80th-minute goal to give Madrid a 2-1 victory and a 3-1 aggregate win over Benfica in the second leg at the Bernabeu.<\/p>\n

PA and The Associated Press contributed to this report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Benfica have categorically denied that Gianluca Prestianni admitted to his teammates he racially abused Real Madrid’s Vin\u00edcius J\u00fanior.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":506417,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[64,63,596,85],"class_list":["post-506416","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-football","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/506416","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=506416"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/506416\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/506417"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=506416"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=506416"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=506416"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}