During a UEFA Champions League knockout game between Real Madrid and Benfica this week, a controversial incident occurred between Vinicius Junior and Gianluca Prestianni, with the former accusing the latter of racist abuse. Kylian Mbappe also backed up Vinicius’ claim, and the game was halted as the situation was assessed. After the game, Benfica coach José Mourinho was dismissive of the situation and defended his player, which many took negatively.
Bayern Munich coach Vincent Kompany, being one of
the few black coaches at this level (and one of only two black coaches in the UEFA Champions League) was asked his opinion on the matter. He delivered a powerful and well articulated statement on the incident and his own personal experiences with racism in Europe, which every football fan should listen to (or read).
Here is the full transcript of the statement, taken manually:
I’m gonna answer it in English if possible so I can be clearer about what I’m saying.
It’s a difficult topic because… I think it happens in this day and time anyway where these types of topics are even more difficult to discuss it seems to be than it used to be in the past. You have on one side… Because I watched the game live, I tried to watch the Dortmund game but it was on Prime apparently so I didn’t have the right thing, so I ended up watching Madrid and Benfica and I was really intrigued by the game.
So I saw it happen live, and… And there is a couple of different components to the story. First is what happens on the pitch. Second is what is happening with the fans as well. Third there’s what happens after the game. And for me in those three things there is some clear separations we need to make.
So what happens on the pitch for me you have Vini Junior who, when you watch the action itself, his reaction cannot be faked. You can see it, his reaction is an emotional reaction. I don’t see any benefit for him to go to the referee, and put all this misery on his shoulders. There is absolutely no reason for Vini Junior to go and do this, and he does it and when he does it, I think, in his mind he’s doing it more because it’s the right thing to do, in that moment.
So he goes and does it and next to him you have Kylian Mbappe, who normally always stays quite diplomatic and on every side, and Kylian Mbappe is 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… But then of course you have the player who’s hiding what he’s saying in his shirt. And on the other end you have this side of it which I think is a little bit… Okay, you have a player who’s complaining, you have a player who says he didn’t do it, and I think unless the player himself comes forward, it’s a difficult case. So I understand this.
But then in the background, you see in the stadium, there are people doing monkey signs. It’s happening in the stadium as well. It’s happening, you can see, it’s in the video, so it happens. You have on one side the altercation between the players, on the other side what happens in the stadium as well, and then for me, even worse, and I’m clear in what I say, is what happens after the game.
So after the game you have the leader of an organization, José Mourinho, who attacks the character of Vinicius Junior, by bringing in the type of celebration, to discredit what Vinicius is doing in this moment. And for me, in terms of leadership it’s a huge mistake. And it’s something that we should not accept. So I’m very clear on that.
On top of it, he mentions the name of Eusebio, to say that Benfica cannot be racist because the best player in the history of Benfica is Eusebio. You know what black players had to go through in the 1960s? Was he there to travel with Eusebio every away game? When he went to every place in Europe?
Probably at the time, because my dad is a black person from the 1960s who made his way, probably at the time the only option they had is 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.
And today to use his name to make a point about Vini Jr. who’s actually finding a situation where he can say something about it… There’s a lot of players who play in different leagues in Europe who don’t have a voice, there’s players today in Hungary, in Bulgaria, in 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. And I’m thinking, how it is that you can… So, I’m not… It’s difficult for me to speak about to be honest, because in many ways, and I say it very honestly, I don’t actually fit in what I see today, in the world. Me personally, I don’t see my place in a lot of the things that are happening in today’s world. I really don’t.
I don’t wanna be a part of one group, I don’t wanna be a part of the other group, but if I see the situation with the player, I would like to see a situation where… My dream is that a the end of the situation, if it is true that the player from Benfica has said something as bad as what he said, I would love a situation where there is still some room where somebody can apologize, and say “Sorry, I made a mistake.”
And this has an impact on the sentence as well. So the sentence should be A or B. But if you admit that you’ve made a mistake, there should be an opportunity as well to say that, “Hey, nobody’s perfect.” This is also a good step.
But we are taking away all these options because we are creating left or right and black and white, and it’s all… You have to be on one side or on the other side, and actually you need… The one thing you can’t do is punish someone unfairly. And the one thing you can’t do is dismiss a person, and attack the character of a person who’s complaining about something he experienced, and something that must be very painful to that person.
So there’s something that needs to happen. But… and I’m just thinking, I’m sorry I’m going on this… But when José Moruinho is doing the knee slide at Old Trafford, well because he attacked the celebration of Vini Jr. When he goes the fans in the semi final Inter Milan against Barcelona, he goes in front of the Barcelona fans and does a 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 have hoped that all of us would say “Stop, his celebration doesn’t matter.” Let’s listen to what he has to say, and let’s defend some simple things, some core things.
But again, even in that sense, I try to be… I like to give context, so I have to still say that I know so many players, and I’m thinking about this situation, who have gone through it, and it’s important to… I mean, it’s happened to Eto’o, it’s happened to Mario Balotelli so many times. So it was their celebration as well?
Okay, maybe there were some characters with personality. What if it happens to Patrick Viera? What if it happens to… it happened to me! Twenty years ago I was in Sevilla. And then we’re gonna say, “Oh it was twenty years ago.” Betis-Sevilla, I was there, with Cheick Tioté. Cheick Tioté is a player who played for Newcastle, who died with a heart attack when he went to China. An unbelievable person, a heart of gold!
Both of us were 18, 19, and you go to this game and you have the Betis-Sevilla fans going on the fences, singing Ku Klux Klan, doing monkey chants, going on the fences like monkeys. And we played a game, I was happy to score a goal in that game as well because of this. And it happened back then, so was it my celebration as well? Was it, what did I do, y’know?
And at the same time I have to note something, it was also one of the most beautiful moments in my career, because the Betis-Sevilla fans, of the general stadium, started to boo against the ultras from Sevilla, from Betis. So you had a fight within the stadium of fans who were not happy that ultras from Betis-Sevilla were doing these things, who were protesting — and I found this beautiful, because I said you know the world is not perfect, you have so many things, so many situations, but at least you have people from the same club fighting, because they don’t accept this.
Then you fast forward, and I’m a coach now, not so long ago. And I told you this story not so long ago. I go to Club Brugge, and I played for the National Team, I was the captain for the National Team. And me and my staff got called “brown monkeys”, and so on.
And after I complain I see how all of these politics happen again, to kill the story. So no consequences, no nothing. And I have a voice. So what do you think for people without a voice?
The problem is not necessarily the incident, the problem is how after that everything gets put in motion, to basically… sort of… I don’t think… Sorry, I’m going because I’m thinking about this as well, but…
What you see and what you feel when you grow up with these issues is somehow, somewhere down the line, this translates into maybe lack of opportunity. Because what happens is that you get pushed further and further away, you get branded more and more into one way. And actually what needs to be done is grow closer together takes a lot of time, takes a lot of effort.
But what happens is exactly the contrary. You get put into, you get pigeonholed into one group, and the other one gets pigeonholed into the other group, and you just grow further apart.
And so, my thought about this is… and now I’m going to finish about this because you’ve opened up something for me here… but I’m gonna finish on this.
In the end, I’m not saying “go left and kill” or “go right and kill”, that’s not what I’m saying. Deep down I know, I’ve met a hundred people who’ve worked with José Mourinho. I’ve never heard a person say anything bad about José. All the players who’ve played with him, they love him.
So I understand the person he is, I understand he’s fighting for his team, he’s fighting for his club, and he’s made a decision. And you cannot be a bad person, and have all the ex players you’ve had talk 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, so… And I understand maybe what he’s done, but he’s made a mistake.
And it’s something that hopefully in the future, it won’t happen like this again and we c an move forward and grow and hopefully… Look at the things that we can do together rather than the things that constantly separate us.
If you are looking for more Bayern Munich and German national team coverage, check out the latest episodes of Bavarian Podcast Works, which you can get on Acast, Spotify, Apple, or any leading podcast distributor…
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