Vinicius: Eight years at Real Madrid, 20 cases of alleged racist abuse

Football should have been revelling in a masterpiece last night - Vinicius scoring a goal so outrageous it deserved to dominate every headline.

Instead, once again, the sport was dragged into the same rancid swamp it never seems able to climb out of: alleged racism, denials, excuses and a staggering lack of understanding from those who should know better.

Vinicius has been here before many, many times. In fact, he has now faced 20 incidents of alleged abuse.

The latest accusation is that Benfica's Argentine midfielder Gianluca Prestianni racially abused him minutes after that wonder goal.

Prestianni denies the allegation. Vinicius has been backed strongly by a number of his team-mates, in particular Kylian Mbappe who told the media he heard a racist term used five times.

After the game, Benfica boss Jose Mourinho effectively blamed the player himself for provoking the situation.

"These talents are able to do these beautiful things, but unfortunately was not just happy to score that astonishing goal," he told Amazon Prime Video Sport. "When you score a goal like that, you celebrate in a respectful way."

He then went on to claim that Benfica couldn't possibly be a racist football club for the simple reason that its greatest-ever player Eusebio was black.

Mourinho's comments mark a new low, but are nonetheless indicative of the media debate - particularly in Spain and today clearly in Portugal - that remains stuck in the same place.

"Yes, they insult him, but he should behave better," seems to be the constant refrain.

As if you could separate one thing from the other. As if they weren't part of the same process.

When Vinicius confronts the stands his attitude is interpreted as arrogant and inappropriate.

But that reaction is said to stem from the same source as his protests against racism: a constant struggle against a hostile environment.

Frantz Fanon said in his influential 1952 book Black Skin, White Masks: "The Black man has to fight twice as hard to be accepted as a man."

Perhaps for Vinicius this burden translates into anger, tension and gestures that, from the outside, seem excessive.

But seen from within, they could be viewed as pure survival.

When the Spanish press demands that Vinicius limit himself to "playing and keeping quiet," it points to what the American sociologist Eduardo Bonilla-Silva called "racism without racists" - cultural frameworks that don't directly insult, but blame the affected person for their reaction.

Vinicius has become a global symbol of resistance against discrimination as he strives to get the authorities to toughen their protocols and actions.