Vinicius receives racist insults at the Mestalla, ends up expelled for an attack and says goodbye with "Second Division" gestures

Valencia – Real Madrid had to stop for a few minutes due to racist insults from a fan of Vinicius Júnior, in one of the most embarrassing images of the season in Spanish football.

In the 72nd minute of the match with a 1-0 scoreline for the local team, the white team was preparing to take a corner when Vinicius began to point to a fan from the Mestalla back, in the stands behind Mamardashvili's goal .

At first, the Brazilian addressed the referee and the linesman, warning them of the situation, but then he himself approached the area of the stands from which the insults came and pointed his finger at a fan. “It was you! It was you!”

Rüdiger, Militao, Lucas and Gayà tried to calm him down, and the Valencia captain even asked his own fans to calm down, but the Brazilian kept insisting. “That's not done, uh, not that, fucking racist,” Lucas said to the stands.. Vinicius, who explained to his teammates that “he is calling me a monkey, a monkey, he is doing 'like this' with his arms and calling me a monkey” went to De Burgos Bengoetxea to summarize the situation and the Police ended up entering the stands to expel the fan. In addition, the public address system warned of “the possibility of suspending the game due to the racist behavior of certain spectators.”

Once the announcement was made, De Burgos approached the benches to speak with the coaches, while Ancelotti whispered something in Vinicius's ear. The referee himself reassured the Brazilian: “Don't worry, if there's any more insult, we'll get inside,” he warned.

Red and “to Second, to Second”

Minutes after the shameful racist insults to Vinicius, the Brazilian was once again the protagonist of the controversy. Musah did not want to give Rüdiger the ball so that Madrid could take a corner and Vinicius reproached him, something that Mamardashvili did not like, who went after him. There began a tangana that ended with Vinicius sent off for the first time in the Spanish League, the second of his career after the red he saw with Castilla against Celta B in 2018.

Hugo Duro grabbed him by the neck for a few seconds so he wouldn't struggle with the Georgian goalkeeper and Vinicius responded with a slap to the Valencia striker's face. After consulting the image in the VAR, in which only that action appeared, De Burgos expelled the footballer from Madrid.

Vinicius applauded the decision between laughs and went towards the changing room tunnel while Lucas spoke in his ear. And to finish, he made a gesture of “a Segunda, a Segunda” to all the stands at Mestalla, who at that moment were singing “Silly, silly!”. The Valencia bench, enraged, jumped for him and a new brawl was formed in the tunnel.

Minutes after finishing the game, Vinicius published a message through his social networks: “The prize that the racists won was my expulsion. It's not football, it's LaLiga.”

In the Movistar microphones, Ceballos defended Vinicius: “Vinicius is disrespected in all fields in Spain, we should take care of him, he is a bulwark of our League and of our club. It's a shame, the coach asked him if he wanted to continue playing. It can't be that he has eleven yellow cards and one red card and the rivals come out unscathed.”. The Andalusian also assured that his partner was wrong with the gestures of “a Segunda”. “It's been bad, the Valencia fans deserve respect, I'm sure they'll apologize.”

“They had to stop the game”

“I don't want to talk about football,” Ancelotti warned after the game. “What has happened today does not have to happen, it is quite evident, a stadium yells at a player and a coach thinks of removing a player for this. He did not want to continue, I have told him that it does not seem fair to me that he is leaving because he is not the culprit, he is the victim, and he has continued”, defended the Italian, who also criticized the expulsion: “They also give him a meaningless red card because it is not an attack. We have a problem”.

Carletto, very angry, asked LaLiga for solutions: “LaLiga has a problem, these episodes of racism have to stop the game. It is a stadium that insults a player for racism and the match has to stop and I say the same if we win 3-0, there is no other way. I have told the referee, he says that the protocol says that we have to notify before and if they continue to stop. He doesn't have to report what? They have started insulting him from the first minute. He is very sad, angry, it is sadness. You can not pass”.

Later, Lucas Vázquez explained that the fan had addressed Vinicius with “monkey” gestures and racist insults. “It is difficult to explain that in 2023 there will still be racism”. “He's young, he can improve his reactions but that doesn't mean that everything can be done to him, they foul him and they don't call them and everything is focused on him.”

Valencia, for its part, issued a statement in which it publicly condemns “any type of insult” and warns that it is “investigating and will take severe measures.”

LaLiga will investigate what happened

LaLiga announced this Sunday that “it has requested all the images available to investigate what happened” and, “in the event of detecting a hate crime, it would proceed to take the appropriate legal actions”. In its statement, the Thebes organization recalls that it has filed “nine complaints related to racist incidents against Vinicius before the RFEF Competition Committee, State Commission against Violence, Racism, Xenophobia and Intolerance in Sport, the Prosecutor's Office of Hate and the Courts”.