{"id":512476,"date":"2026-03-01T20:35:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-01T20:35:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/512476\/"},"modified":"2026-03-01T20:35:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-01T20:35:08","slug":"referee-pauses-la-liga-game-after-elches-rafa-mir-accused-of-racist-insult-la-liga","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/512476\/","title":{"rendered":"Referee pauses La Liga game after Elche\u2019s Rafa Mir accused of racist insult | La Liga"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/football\/espanyol\" data-link-name=\"in body link\" data-component=\"auto-linked-tag\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Espanyol<\/a> defender Omar El Hilali accused the Elche forward Rafa Mir of a racist insult during their teams\u2019 La Liga game on Sunday, according to the referee\u2019s report.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">Iosu Galech Apezteguia briefly paused the match under the anti-racism protocol in the 80th minute after speaking to the Morocco international El Hilali. \u201cEl Hilali informed me that he [Mir] addressed him in the following terms: \u2018You came here on a dinghy,\u2019 which could not be heard by any member of the refereeing team,\u201d wrote the referee in his report. Consequently, I proceeded to activate the anti-racism protocol, for which reason the match was stopped for three minutes.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">El Hilali, who was born in Spain, seemed visibly upset after the incident, while Mir scored a penalty in the 90th minute to secure the hosts a 2-2 draw against Espanyol.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">Spanish football has struggled to deal with racism in the stands in recent years, with the Real Madrid forward Vin\u00edcius J\u00fanior regularly targeted. In May 2025, five Valladolid supporters were jailed for a year for racist insults aimed at Vin\u00edcius in 2022.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">Four members of an Atl\u00e9tico Madrid ultra group received prison sentences for displaying an effigy of Vin\u00edcius in January 2023, though the punishment was later changed to fines.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">Last month Vin\u00edcius accused the Benfica midfielder Gianluca Prestianni of racially abusing him in a Champions League game, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/football\/2026\/feb\/23\/uefa-suspends-benfica-gianluca-prestianni-vinicius-junior-real-madrid-champions-league\" data-link-name=\"in body link\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">leading to a Uefa investigation<\/a> which is continuing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Espanyol defender Omar El Hilali accused the Elche forward Rafa Mir of a racist insult during their&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":512477,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[64,63,596,85],"class_list":["post-512476","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\/512476","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=512476"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/512476\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/512477"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=512476"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=512476"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=512476"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}