Half an hour after the final whistle at the Estadio da Luz, Vinicius Junior was already showered and dressed, walking out of Real Madrid’s dressing room, past a scrum of reporters and onto the bus — travel bag in his right hand, phone in his left hand, an almighty burden on his shoulders.
He was in no mood to hang around after a grim night like this. He looked younger than his 25 years, smaller than his recorded height of 5ft 9in (175cm), less like a football superstar and more like a boy who has seen too much, heard too much, suffered too much and is wearied by it all — blessed with extraordinary talent as a footballer, but subjected so often to the worst of human prejudices.
Vinicius Jr had settled the first leg of this Champions League play-off in Lisbon with a wonderful goal, but the beauty of that moment was forgotten in the ugliness that followed: first the deluge of missiles that rained down as he celebrated in front of Benfica’s supporters; then his allegation of racial abuse by an opposition player, which led the referee to suspend play for 10 minutes; then the loud boos and jeers that were aimed at him from the home crowd for the remainder of Madrid’s 1-0 victory; then the claims and counter claims in the bitter aftermath, in which Benfica coach Jose Mourinho effectively accused him of inciting the incident.
“There is something wrong because it happens in every stadium,” Mourinho said in his post-match interview with Prime Video. “Every stadium where Vinicius plays, something happens. Always.”
That much is true; to a long list of away grounds where Vinicius Jr has suffered abuse, which includes Barcelona, Real Mallorca, Atletico Madrid, Real Valladolid, Sevilla, Getafe and Valencia, we can now add Benfica’s Estadio da Luz.
But Mourinho was not expressing solidarity. He was implying that Vinicius Jr brings it on himself by provoking opposition fans — something that Mourinho, of course, would never dream of.
Mourinho suggested Vinicius Jr could have avoided it all by showing the home crowd more respect rather than by dancing in front of them at the corner flag. That was the only thing he wished to denounce: not the missiles thrown at the Madrid bus before the game; not the objects thrown at Vinicius Jr; not the racially abusive term that the Madrid forward accused one of Benfica’s players of making; not the sustained howls of abuse to which Vinicius Jr was subjected after that.
The flashpoint involving Vinicius Jr and Gianluca Prestianni (Patricia De Melo Moreira/AFP via Getty Images)
The player in question, Gianluca Prestianni, denied the allegation. “I want to clarify that in no moment did I direct racist results at the player Vinicius Jr, who unfortunately misinterpreted what he believed he had heard,” the Benfica forward wrote on Instagram afterwards. “I have never been racist towards anyone and I regret the threats I received from Real Madrid players.”
Madrid forward Kylian Mbappe was insistent. “The No 25 of Benfica — I don’t want to say his name (Prestianni), he does not deserve it — began to speak badly, which can happen in football,” he told reporters. “But then he put his jersey over his face to say that Vinicius is a monkey, five times. I heard it. There are Benfica players who heard it too. From that point, everything you saw happened.”
Benfica responded at 2:11am, more than four hours after the final whistle, by posting a video on their X account showing the Prestianni-Vinicius Jr exchange from behind, with Mbappe a little further away, and saying that these images “demonstrate, given the distance, that the Real Madrid players could not have heard what they claim to have heard”.
Como demonstram as imagens, dada a distância, os jogadores do Real Madrid não podem ter ouvido o que andam a dizer que ouviram. pic.twitter.com/7JF9AVuhEM
— SL Benfica (@SLBenfica) February 18, 2026
Set alongside even Mourinho’s admission that he could not simply take either player’s word above the other’s, Benfica’s insistence on their player’s innocence seemed imprudent. Their sharing of Prestianni’s statement — along with the words “Juntos, ao teu lado” (Together, by your side) — pointed at a familiar and misplaced rush towards solidarity at a time that called for circumspection.
UEFA, European football’s governing body, will be expected to investigate the matter once it receives the observations of the match officials, led by referee Francois Letexier, who immediately responded to Vinicius Jr by crossing his arms to signal that he was stopping play in response to an allegation of racial abuse.
“All we can say at the moment is the official reports from the matches played last night are currently being reviewed,” a UEFA spokesperson said on Wednesday. “Where matters are reported, proceedings are opened and should they lead to disciplinary sanctions being imposed, they are announced on the UEFA disciplinary website.”
Play was suspended for 10 minutes and there was a heated exchange on the touchline between players, coaches and staff of both clubs. For a time, it appeared that Vinicius Jr, slumped on the bench looking aggrieved, would not continue.
But he played on. He has always regarded that as the best response to abuse. “I’m not a victim of racism, I’m a tormentor of racists,” he once told reporters. And whether he and Mbappe had heard what they said they heard, or whether it was a case of mishearing and misinterpreting (as Prestianni claims), that flashpoint, along with the ensuing hostility from the terraces, appeared to fuel Vinicius Jr for the rest of the game.
It must be exhausting, though. There have been times when Vinicius Jr has admitted that, for all his attempts to defy and even at times provoke the haters, he has found it overwhelming. “I feel sadder and sadder and I have less and less desire to play,” he told reporters in March 2024. “But if I leave here (Real Madrid), I’m going to give the racists what they want.”
Vinicius Jr is booked for his celebrations after scoring (Angel Martinez/Getty Images)
In Spain, the number of incidents has fallen in part because, after years of complacency or even outright denial, the appalling treatment of Vinicius Jr has led to a belated sense of action. La Liga, which at one stage was accused by Vinicius Jr of “doing nothing” about racist abuse from the crowd, has filed separate complaints that have led to criminal cases. Four people were handed suspended jail sentences last year of between 14 and 22 months after an inflatable effigy, wearing Vinicius’s Real Madrid shirt, was held from a bridge before a Copa del Rey match against Atletico Madrid in January 2023.
But the hostility towards Vinicius Jr from the terraces persists and while it is easy and convenient to pass that off in the way Mourinho and various TV pundits tried to, he is hardly the only player in world football who enjoys a mildly provocative goal celebration. For some people, there appears to be something so triggering about those celebrations when they are performed by a young Black man who has both the coordination and the swagger to make them work.
What was different about Tuesday — the only thing that was different — was that the accusation centred on an opposition player. Vinicius Jr, in his own Instagram statement, said that racists are “cowards” who “need to put their shirts over their mouths to show how weak they are”. He added that racists have “the protection of others who, in theory, have an obligation to punish”.
Most striking was the line that “nothing that happened today is a tragedy in my life or in my family’s life”. He sounded resigned to it, as if this is simply what happens when he plays, scores a goal and has the temerity to celebrate.
It was, to repeat, a brilliant goal: a Vinicius Jr special, cutting in from the left-hand side, teasing the opposition defender, making space for himself and curling a beautiful shot inside the far corner. But it was rendered largely irrelevant by what followed, which his team-mate Trent Alexander-Arnold described as a “disgrace to football”. Prestianni and Benfica, it needs to be restated, dispute that version of events.
Vinicius Jr scores Madrid’s winner (Filipe Amorim/AFP via Getty Images)
But it was, as Alexander-Arnold suggests, an ugly and deeply unpleasant night. Quite apart from the allegation made against Prestianni, there was the hail of missiles that had rained down on Vinicius Jr just before that and the shower of invective that followed after play had been stopped due to his belief he had been racially abused.
Then there was the painfully predictable post-match rush to deflect away from an allegation of racism and to ask whether Vinicius Jr had somehow brought it upon himself. And one hopes that in the cold light of day, Mourinho, of all people, will recognise that such a suggestion was appalling.
Because the reality is that, yes, it does follow Vinicius Jr. And as he left the dressing room in Lisbon, it was possible to see him not as the beguiling tormentor you watch with the ball at his feet but as a young man desperate to enjoy his football, one instead having to put another horribly bittersweet night behind him and to keep trying, somehow, to draw strength from it.