The Price of Being Black and Proud in European Soccer
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Student Nation
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February 25, 2026
Brazilian star Vinicius Jr. has repeatedly been the victim of racist insults from football fans. Now, it seems such vitriol can even come from players without much consequence.
Vinicius Jr. and Gianluca Prestianni during the 2025/26 UEFA Champions League first stage match between SL Benfica and Real Madrid.
(Gualter Fatia/Getty)
In 1965, Malcolm X gave a speech to a local church in Selma, Alabama. In this speech he addressed the Klu Klux Klan, saying: “They put up a sheet so you won’t know who they are. He’s a coward. No! The time will come when that sheet will be torn off. If the federal government doesn’t take it off, we will take it off.”
On February 17, Gianluca Prestianni did not wear a sheet, but was still a coward. The 20-year-old Argentine footballer from SL Benfica covered his mouth with his canary red jersey as he would have called Vinicius Jr.”mono“, Spanish for “monkey”, five consecutive times after the Brazilian star celebrated after scoring a goal. Play was stopped for 10 minutes before play was restarted. Prestianni denied saying “mono“, claiming to have used a homophobic slur instead. In response, the club said there had been a “smear campaign” against him. “I heard it,” Kylian Mbappé said of the racist slur allegations. “There are Benfica players who also heard it.”
Unfortunately, this is not an isolated incident for the sport, especially for Vinicius Jr. Since signing for Real Madrid CF in 2018, Vinicius Jr. has faced over 26 instances of racist abuse. While the regularity of these incidents has made him a global figure of resistance against racial discrimination, it has also intensified the severity of the attacks.
Current number
In 2021, Vinicius Jr. was having his best season since arriving in Spain when the first reported incident of abuse occurred while he was playing against FC Barcelona. The harassment quickly spread from single individuals to entire stadiums. During away matches, the Brazilian was confronted with monkey noises and other racial epithets. Abuse has also been directed at his supporters, with an 8-year-old girl receiving death threats for wearing a Vinicius Jr. jersey at the Metropolitano, Atlético Madrid’s stadium. In January 2023, rival fans hung an effigy of Vinicius Jr. on a bridge in Madrid. Although four people were arrested for this specific hate crime, the majority of incidents had little impact.
The Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) implemented a three-step procedure in 2009 that grants referees the power to stop matches if they become aware of a racist incident and immediately open an investigation. If there is sufficient evidence, then the rule allows the match to be abandoned and the offender suspended for a minimum of 10 matches. The procedure has only been invoked once, in 2024, by La Liga in the Spanish first division.
Since this tool is almost never used, racist incidents continue to occur. On January 16, a banana was thrown onto the pitch, accompanied by racist chants outside the stadium before kick-off. The case was condemned by the league but without repercussions. Today, Prestianni’s behavior showed that such vitriol can even come from players without much consequence.
In response, Vinicius Jr. echoed Malcolm’s words more than half a century ago. “Racists are, above all, cowards,” he wrote on Instagram. “They have to put their shirt over their mouth to show how weak they are.”
UEFA’s investigation is ongoing, but Prestianni’s absence from the second leg is confirmed. The Argentinian was provisionally suspended for the rematch on February 25, announced six days after the initial match.
Immediately after the final whistle, Jose Mourinho, the coach of SL Benfica, controversially joined the conversation. During the stoppage, Mourinho revealed that he told Vinicius Jr. that “when you score a goal like that, you just celebrate and go back.” However, it was Mourinho who was sent off from this match for unsporting behavior, after accusing referee François Letexier of bias in the officiating. “When he was discussing racism, I told him he was the greatest person in the history of this club. [Eusebio] was black,” Mourinho said. “Why didn’t he celebrate like Eusebio?”
His invocation of Eusebio was telling. The Portuguese football legend was born in 1942 in the segregated capital of Mozambique – a Portuguese colony at the time – and was granted Portuguese citizenship only through an exception made for migrants who demonstrated prowess in the sport. But his new passport did not protect Eusebio, then 18, from racism in Lisbon when he competed for Benfica. In 2011, Eusebio said he wouldn’t react to being called black or “much more.” He hasn’t spoken about the treatment he received and has been much more traditional in his approach to the game.
By equating speaking out against racial abuse with the right, Mourinho asked Vinicius Jr. why he couldn’t do the same. Mourinho not only blamed Vinicius Jr. for inciting the abuse he suffered, but continued to place the docile, non-reactionary black athlete on a pedestal.
“I am a field Negro,” Malcolm X said in his speech. “If I can’t live in the house as a human being, I pray for the wind to come.” He distinguished himself from the “house Negro” by the extent to which a black person is careful to prioritize the comfort of whites in a position of authority.
This dynamic is now playing out on the European football field. While players like Eusebio would change the way they act — and ultimately address unfair treatment in a way that wouldn’t upset the powers that be — players like Vinicius Jr. experience basic abuse or mistreatment and do no such thing, afraid to openly criticize a racist system.
For now, the ability to sustain humanity from all “He will never deserve something like that,” Mbappé wrote about Vinícius Jr. on X. “I don’t understand how there are people telling me he deserves that.”
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