Mourinho was seen speaking with Vinicius after he walked off the pitch following the interaction with Prestianni.<\/p>\n
But it was Mourinho’s post-match comments that were the most shocking.<\/p>\n
While publicly backing his player Prestianni, Mourinho suggested Vinicius had incited tensions through his celebration in front of the home support.<\/p>\n
“You score a goal from another world, why celebrate like that?” Mourinho said. <\/p>\n
“The same thing always happens in so many stadiums. In how many states has this happened? In how many stadiums? How many? How many? <\/p>\n
“He’s an out of this world player, I love him. Vinicius tells me one thing and Prestianni tells me another. I want to be balanced.”<\/p>\n
The remarks sparked widespread criticism, with many accusing Mourinho of shifting attention away from the racism allegations and placing responsibility on the victim instead.<\/p>\n
In addition to expressing his belief that Vinicius had been disrespectful with his goal celebration, he pointed to the club’s legendary striker Eusebio as proof that Benfica are not a racist club.<\/p>\n
Asked if he felt Vinicius incited the crowd, Mourinho said: “Yes. I believe so.<\/p>\n
“It should be the crazy moment of the game, an amazing goal. Unfortunately [he was] not just happy to score that astonishing goal. When you score a goal like that, you celebrate in a respectful way.”<\/p>\n
He added: “When he was arguing about racism, I told him the biggest person in the history of this club [Eusebio] was black.<\/p>\n
“This club, the last thing that it is, is racist. They [Vinicius and Prestianni] told me different things. But I don’t believe in one or another. I want to be an independent.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mourinho was seen speaking with Vinicius after he walked off the pitch following the interaction with Prestianni. But…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":703410,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[440],"tags":[49,48,561,82],"class_list":["post-703409","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\/703409","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=703409"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/703409\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/703410"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=703409"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=703409"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=703409"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}