{"id":499097,"date":"2026-02-25T18:33:07","date_gmt":"2026-02-25T18:33:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/499097\/"},"modified":"2026-02-25T18:33:07","modified_gmt":"2026-02-25T18:33:07","slug":"gianluca-prestianni-benficas-appeal-against-suspension-rejected-before-real-madrid-match","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/499097\/","title":{"rendered":"Gianluca Prestianni: Benfica’s appeal against suspension rejected before Real Madrid match"},"content":{"rendered":"

Gianluca Prestianni will miss the second leg of Benfica’s Champions League tie against Real Madrid after Uefa rejected the club’s appeal against his suspension.<\/p>\n

The Argentine winger was handed a provisional one-match ban<\/a> after Real Madrid’s Vinicius Jr reported alleged racist abuse during last week’s 1-0 defeat in a knockout round play-off first leg.<\/p>\n

Benfica said they would appeal the decision, but accepted it was unlikely to “have any practical effect” before Wednesday’s return at the Bernabeu.<\/p>\n

Uefa has imposed the ban on a provisional basis, pending the result of a full investigation by an ethics and disciplinary inspector, and further punishment could still be handed out to the 20-year-old.<\/p>\n

Prestianni trained alongside his Benfica team-mates<\/a> at Real Madrid’s stadium on Tuesday in the hope his ban could be overturned in time to feature.<\/p>\n

But the Portuguese club’s request was dismissed by Uefa’s Appeals Body and the player remains provisionally suspended for their next match in European club competition, which is Wednesday’s game.<\/p>\n

Prestianni, who has denied racially abusing Vinicius, would otherwise have been eligible to face the Spanish hosts while the investigation took place.<\/p>\n

However, European football’s governing body said there was enough evidence to adequately support a “prima facie” case against him in relation to the use of discriminatory language.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Gianluca Prestianni will miss the second leg of Benfica’s Champions League tie against Real Madrid after Uefa rejected…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":499098,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[440],"tags":[49,48,561,82],"class_list":["post-499097","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-soccer","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-soccer","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/499097","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=499097"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/499097\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/499098"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=499097"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=499097"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=499097"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}