Gianluca Prestianni‘s incident against Vinicius Jr. won’t go unnoticed. The Benfica player has been punished by UEFA and won’t play the second leg of the Champions League series against Real Madrid.
According to Rob Harris of Sky News, UEFA will suspend Prestianni provisionally, meaning the investigation is still on course. The suspension will be for just one game. Hence, Prestianni won’t play against Real Madrid at the Santiago Bernabeu.
UEFA’s statement indicates: “Following the appointment of a UEFA Ethics and Disciplinary Inspector (EDI) to investigate allegations of discriminatory behaviour during the UEFA Champions League 2025/2026 Knock-out Play-off match between SL Benfica and Real Madrid CF on 17 February 2026, and upon request of the EDI with an interim report, the UEFA Control, Ethics and Disciplinary Body (CEDB) today decided to provisionally suspend Mr. Gianluca Prestianni for the next (1) UEFA club competition match for which he would otherwise be eligible for the prima facie violation of Article 14 of the UEFA Disciplinary Regulations (DR) related to a discriminatory behaviour”.
“This is without prejudice to any ruling that the UEFA disciplinary bodies may subsequently make following the conclusion of the ongoing investigation and its respective submission to the UEFA disciplinary bodies,” the statement closed.
Benfica’s also making moves
After the Prestianni incident, Vinicius Jr. made a foul that would warrant him his second yellow card, hence a red card should’ve been shown to the Brazilian. However, that didn’t happen. Benfica’s manager, Jose Mourinho, complained and then he was sent off. Well, according to Sky Sports News, Mourinho “is exercising his right to not talk to the media before or after Benfica’s game at Real Madrid on Wednesday.“
This incident has been talked about plenty. Even Pep Guardiola chimed in with his opinion in a candid way. After all, while racism is always deplorable, many times it comes from the stands, where UEFA has less power to actually condemn the actions, given that fans are not part of UEFA, but just spectators. With Prestianni, it can take action and make an investigation, as the entity is doing, to assure there was not a wrongdoing there.
How is the investigation going?
There is not an answer yet in regards to that. Per the UEFA statement, “further information about this matter will be made available in due course.” However, this leaves fans, media, and even teams with many doubts. Prestianni put his shirt over his mouth at the time of the incident, so there is no certainty of what he said. The player himself said he didn’t use any racist slur, rather an homophobic one against the Real Madrid player. However, there’s no clear image of it.
Hence, there is a cloud of doubt about the investigation. What is UEFA actually researching now? Maybe the entity is trying to see if any of the microphones picked something up. This might also prompt some changes in UEFA. For instance, the NFL mic’s up a couple of players per game (for entertainment purposes rather than anything else), maybe that’s a way UEFA goes to ensure this doesn’t happen again and hold players accountable.