Jose Mourinho told he ‘f***ed up’ as ‘clumsy’ Vinicius Junior stance was ‘huge mistake’ | OneFootball

One of Jose Mourinho’s former players has claimed that the Benfica boss “f***ed up” with his stance on Real Madrid attacker Vinicius Junior.

Last week, Mourinho’s Benfica faced Real Madrid in the first leg of their Champions League play-off, with Vinicius Jr scoring the only goal in his side’s 1-0 win.

It was a stunning goal from Vinicius Jr to win it for Real Madrid, but this moment and match was overshadowed by Benfica star Gianluca Prestianni being accused of racially abusing the Brazil international after his goal.

Mourinho has also been caught up in the storm and this is all his doing, with the former Chelsea, Manchester United and Spurs boss attacking Vinicius Jr over his celebration and insisted that Benfica is not a racist club.

“When you score a goal like that, you celebrate in a respectful way. The words they exchange, Prestianni with Vinicius, I want to be independent. I don’t comment about it,” Mourinho said last week.

“When he was arguing about racism I told him the biggest person in the history of this club was black [Eusebio].

“This club, the last thing it is is racist, so if in his mind it was something in relation to that, this is Benfica. There is something wrong because it happens in every stadium. Every stadium that Vinicius plays [in] something happens. Always.”

Prestianni has since been given a ban for Wednesday’s return leg between Real Madrid and Benfica, with former Chelsea midfielder John Obi Mikel opting to hit out at Mourinho over his “clumsy comment”.

“What I expected to hear from my old boss, from my gaffer [was] ‘Yes it is under investigation, but there is not place for racism there, there is no place for such thing, but let’s wait until it is concluded, there is no place for that’,” Mikel responded on his Obi One Podcast.

“So for him to come out and say ‘Oh yeah, Vinicius Jr shouldn’t have celebrated the way he did’, that was a clumsy, clumsy comment from Jose Mourinho. He will be the first, he knows, he will be the first to know ‘I’ve f*cked up here’. He is a smart, smart guy, a very smart guy, he knows.”

Mikel added: “I don’t know the reason why he hasn’t apologised, but I expect him to come out at some point and make a statement.

“There is nobody who has played with Jose Mourinho that has a bad word to say about him, especially when it comes to racism, especially, zero, absolutely zero.

“He will be the first to say ‘I f*cked up, it was after the game, emotions were running high, I didn’t think about my statement, I didn’t think about what I was going to say’. He is an experienced manager, he is a smart guy, he knows what he should have said. The statement that he made is a massive, massive, huge mistake.”