Real Madrid secured a narrow 1-0 victory over Benfica in the first leg of their UEFA Champions League playoff tie for a place in the Last 16, but the match has been overshadowed by controversial remarks from Jos\u00e9 Mourinho directed at Vin\u00edcius J\u00fanior.<\/p>\n
Following the game in Lisbon, Mourinho shared his views on the recurring incidents surrounding Vin\u00edcius Jr and the reactions he provokes in stadiums across Europe. The former Real Madrid manager questioned the Brazilian star\u2019s goal celebrations, suggesting they may be contributing to the hostile atmosphere he faces.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen it happens in so many stadiums, always with the same player, there is something wrong\u2026 I do not get it,\u201d Mourinho said. He added that he advised Vin\u00edcius to celebrate \u201cnormally,\u201d asking why he could not show happiness \u201clike Pel\u00e9 or Di St\u00e9fano\u201d rather than in a way that appears to provoke opposition fans.<\/p>\n
Mourinho also rejected accusations of racism directed at Benfica supporters, stating that the Portuguese giants are \u201cnot a racist club\u201d and pointing to legendary striker Eus\u00e9bio as proof of the club\u2019s historic respect for Black players.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Real Madrid secured a narrow 1-0 victory over Benfica in the first leg of their UEFA Champions League playoff tie\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":202,"featured_media":44237,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4652],"tags":[2521,177,3686,1823,4621,1163,1870,490,48,4510,2554],"class_list":["post-44236","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-champions-league","tag-benfica","tag-champions-league","tag-david-ornstein","tag-fabrizio-romano","tag-jose","tag-jose-mourinho","tag-mourinho","tag-ucl","tag-uefa-champions-league","tag-vini","tag-vinicius-jr"],"reading_time":"1 min read","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44236","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/202"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44236"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44236\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":44238,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44236\/revisions\/44238"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44237"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44236"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44236"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44236"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}