Bayern Munich head coach Vincent Kompany has accused Jose Mourinho of making a ‘huge mistake’ with his response to Vinicius Jr’s racism claim in the Champions League this week.
After scoring Real Madrid’s only goal in the 1-0 win against Benfica at the Estadio da Luz on Tuesday night, Vinicius received a yellow card for dancing in front of the home supporters during his celebration.
Moments later, Benfica winger Gianluca Prestianni was seen speaking to Vinicius with his mouth covered by his shirt. The Madrid winger immediately ran to referee, Francois Letexier, claiming that Prestianni had said a racist insult towards him.
Madrid forward Kylian Mbappe alleged after the match that Prestianni had called Vinicius ‘mono’ or monkey, which has been denied by the Benfica winger.
Mourinho, meanwhile, took aim at Vinicius’ celebration and insinuated that the Brazilian’s actions sparked the incident.
‘I saw it happen live and there’s a couple of different components to this story, first is what happened on the pitch, second is what happened with the fans as well, third there’s what happened after the game. For me, there’s clear separations we need to make,’ Kompany said on Friday.
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‘So what happens on the pitch, you have Vini Jr, when you watch the action, his reaction cannot be faked. You can see it, his reaction is emotional. I don’t see a benefit for him in going to the referee and taking all this misery on his shoulders. There was absolutely no reason for Vinicius Jr to go and do this. I think when he does it, in his mind he does it because it’s the right thing to do in that moment.
What Jose Mourinho said after Vinicius Jr's racism claim
‘I spoke to Alvaro [Arbeloa] before I understood what the problem was, just to say: ‘This guy scores a goal that’s out of this world, why does he being stupid in the corner?.’ Then later when I realise, [and] it seems Vinicius doesn’t want to play, we were talking about [whether] we play again.
‘I want to try to be more balanced than Arbeloa and Mbappe. I do not want to say that Vinicius is a liar and nor do I want to say that my player is an incredible boy. They have decided to go their way, their perspective; I don’t want to go there. I said to Vinicius: you scored a goal that was out of this world, why do you celebrate like this? Why not celebrate like Di Stefano, Pele, Eusebio, just with the happiness of being a player from another world?’
‘Next to him you have Kylian Mbappe, who normally always stays quite diplomatic, Kylian Mbappe was really clear about what he heard and what he saw and he’s even more clear after the game when he speaks about it.
‘So all of this happens and of course you have a player who is hiding what he’s saying with his shirt. You have a player who is complaining, you have a player who says he didn’t do it, and I think unless the player comes forward it’s a difficult case and I understand this.
‘Then in the background you see in the stadium there are people doing monkey signs, it’s happening in the stadium, you can see it.
‘Then for me, even worse, is what happens after the game. What happens is you have a leader of an organisation, Jose Mourinho, who basically attacks the character of Vinicius Junior by bringing in the type of celebration to discredit what Vinicius is doing in this moment.
‘For me, in terms of leadership, that’s a huge mistake in my opinion. And that’s something we shouldn’t accept. So I’m very clear on that.
‘On top of that, he mentions the name of Eusebio. He says that Benfica cannot be racist because the best player in the club’s history is Eusebio. You know what black players had to go through in the 1960s? Was he there to travel with Eusebio to every away game when he went to every place in Europe? My dad is a black person from the 1960s also who made his way. Probably at the time the only option they had was to be quiet, and to say nothing, and to be above it, and to be ten times better to get a little bit of credit and people say, ‘actually he’s good’. That’s Eusebio’s life, probably.
‘Today, to use his name to make a point about Vini Jr who is actually finally in a situation where he can say something about this. There are a lot of players who play different leagues still in Europe who don’t have a voice, there are players in Bulgaria, Hungary and Serbia, if something happens to them and they are black players they have zero chance to have any kind of support. Vini Jr is at least in a situation where a lot of people have made it possible for him to take this moment, and to protest in this moment.
‘It’s a difficult thing for me to speak about because to be honest, in many ways I don’t actually fit in what I see in what I see is happening in the world, me personally, I don’t see my place in a lot of things that are happening in today’s world, I really don’t.
‘I don’t want to be part of one group or another group. But if I see the situation with the player, I would like to see a situation where if it is true that the player from Benfica said something as bad as what he’s said, I would love a situation where there’s a room where someone can apologise, say, ‘sorry I made a mistake’, and this has an impact on the sentence as well. If you admit you’ve made a mistake there should be an opportunity as well to say, ‘hey, nobody’s perfect, this is a good step’. But we are taking away all these options because we are creating left or right, black or white, you have to be on one side or the other side.
‘The one thing you can’t do is punish someone unfairly. And one thing you can’t do is dismiss a person and attack the character of a person who is complaining about something he experienced, and is something that is painful to this person.
‘When Jose Mourinho is doing the knee slide at Old Trafford, when he goes to the Barcelona fans in Inter Milan’s semi-final and does the celebration, when he plays against Sevilla with AS Roma and in that moment he’s fighting with the referees and the referees have to leave the country under protection after that game, in that moment if someone was racist to Mourinho I would hope all of us would say, ‘stop, it doesn’t matter about his celebration, let’s listen to what he has to say’. Let’s defend some simple things, some core things.
‘I’ve met 100 people who have worked with Jose Mourinho, I’ve never heard anyone say anything bad about Jose. All the players who have played under him love him. So I understand the person he is, I understand he’s fighting for his team, fighting for his club and he’s made that decision.
‘You cannot be a bad person when all your former players speak so positively about you, so I know he’s a good person, I don’t need to judge him as a person but I know what I’ve heard.
‘I understand what he’s done but he’s made a mistake. It’s something that hopefully in the future won’t happen like this again, so we can move forward and grow. Hopefully we can look at the things we can do together rather than the things that constantly separate us.’
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