Benfica winger Gianluca Prestianni claimed on Wednesday that he had been punished “without evidence” following accusations that he racially abused Real Madrid forward Vinicius Junior.<\/p>\n
The 20-year-old Argentinian was accused of making a racist insult towards the Brazilian in February, while covering his mouth with his shirt.<\/p>\n
The referee stopped the match for 10 minutes and the player was subsequently suspended for the second leg by UEFA, which opened an investigation.<\/p>\n
If UEFA finds he abused Vinicius then he will be banned for at least 10 matches.<\/p>\n
Real Madrid progressed 3-1 on aggregate to reach the Champions League last 16.<\/p>\n
Prestianni told Argentine broadcaster Telefe that missing the second leg in Madrid “hurt a lot” and denied making the insult.<\/p>\n
“I was thinking about my father, my mother, my grandparents, about the fact that so many things were being said that don’t reflect who I am and that didn’t happen,” he said in his first interview since the incident.<\/p>\n
“It’s ugly and it hurts a lot.”<\/p>\n
He said he was “very grateful” to his club and his teammates for their internal support, and said that his coach, Jose Mourinho, was “a phenomenon”.<\/p>\n
Mourinho was criticised after seeming to indicate that Vinicius provoked the alleged abuse with his goal celebration after scoring in the first leg.<\/p>\n
The Benfica coach later clarified his position, assuring that if the accusations of racism were confirmed by the investigation, the Argentine would never play for him again.<\/p>\n
Prestianni was called up by Argentina for friendlies played in the past week.<\/p>\n
“I work day in, day out to make this opportunity arrive,” the winger said, adding that his greatest dream was to play in a World Cup with the Albiceleste.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Benfica winger Gianluca Prestianni claimed on Wednesday that he had been punished “without evidence” following accusations that he racially abused Real Madrid forward Vinicius Junior. The 20-year-old Argentinian was accused of making a racist insult towards the Brazilian in February, while covering his mouth with his shirt. The referee stopped the match for 10 minutes […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":32239,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sitemap_exclude":false,"_sitemap_priority":"","_sitemap_frequency":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"subtitle":"","format":"standard","override":[{"template":"7","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"1","layout":"left-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"topbottom","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_share_counter":"1","show_view_counter":"1","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author":"1","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_category":"1","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","post_calculate_word_method":"str_word_count","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","show_prev_next_post":"1","show_popup_post":"1","show_comment_section":"1","number_popup_post":"1","show_author_box":"1","show_post_related":"0","show_inline_post_related":"0"}],"image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","disable_ad":"0"},"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":{"view_counter_number":"0","share_counter_number":"0","like_counter_number":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"jnews_post_split":{"post_split":[{"template":"1","tag":"h2","numbering":"asc","mode":"normal","first":"0","enable_toc":"0","toc_type":"normal"}]},"footnotes":""},"categories":[83],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-32238","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32238","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32238"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32238\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32239"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32238"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32238"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32238"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}