{"id":509108,"date":"2026-02-24T11:36:48","date_gmt":"2026-02-24T15:36:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/?post_type=news&#038;p=509108"},"modified":"2026-02-24T11:36:48","modified_gmt":"2026-02-24T15:36:48","slug":"courtois-backs-vinicius-after-racism-drama-surrounding-the-brazilian","status":"publish","type":"news","link":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/news\/courtois-backs-vinicius-after-racism-drama-surrounding-the-brazilian\/","title":{"rendered":"Courtois backs Vinicius after racism drama surrounding the Brazilian"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Los Blancos goalkeeper Thibaut Courtois claims Vini Jr\u2019s celebration vs. Benfica in the past week\u2019s UCL tie in Lisbon &#8220;does not justify a suspected act of racism&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cVinicius has never said anything like that, so I have no doubt that he heard it,\u201d Courtois shared.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI believe him 100%. Since Prestianni is not talking, we will never know for sure, but there is not much more that we can do.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The match was halted for 10 minutes after the Brazilian superstar alerted official Francois Letexier to the incident.<\/p>\n<p>Thibaut shared that he and his teammates were ready to &#8220;stand their ground&#8221;, but agreed to continue the match after Vini told them that he wanted to continue.<\/p>\n<p>Real Madrid goalkeeper added that it bothers him that Vini\u2019s celebration is being used against him and that the Brazilian didn\u2019t do anything bad, as a lot of opposition players have celebrated the same way when they scored against Los Blancos.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">\ud83d\udea8\u26a0\ufe0f Thibaut Courtois: \u201cI saw videos of Benfica fans doing awful gestures in the stadium, it was really pathetic\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI don&#39;t know if Benfica will punish them or not, but it was really pathetic\u201d. <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/OGg9iCUQPv\" target=\"_blank\">pic.twitter.com\/OGg9iCUQPv<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Fabrizio Romano (@FabrizioRomano) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/FabrizioRomano\/status\/2026276339347525891?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">February 24, 2026<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p> <script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Los Blancos goalkeeper Thibaut Courtois claims Vini Jr\u2019s celebration vs. Benfica in the past week\u2019s UCL tie in Lisbon &#8220;does not justify a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4225,"featured_media":509109,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false},"tags":[17375],"news_category":[137,14235,16715],"gn_keywords":[25864,18465],"acf":{"news_source":"","link_picture":"","announce":"Thibaut revealed his support for his teammate and the way Vini celebrates.","video":[]},"rank_math_focus_keyword":"","rank_math_description":"","rank_math_title":"","rank_math_robots":"","rank_math_canonical_url":"","rank_math_facebook_title":"","rank_math_facebook_description":"","rank_math_facebook_image":"","rank_math_twitter_title":"","rank_math_twitter_description":"","rank_math_twitter_image":"","rank_math_snippet_shortcode":"","rank_math_primary_category":"","rankmath_seo":{"focus_keyword":"","description":"","title":"","canonical_url":"","robots":"","facebook":{"title":"","description":"","image":""},"twitter":{"title":"","description":"","image":""}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/509108"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4225"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=509108"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/509108\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":509110,"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/509108\/revisions\/509110"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/509109"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=509108"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=509108"},{"taxonomy":"news_category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news_category?post=509108"},{"taxonomy":"gn_keywords","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/gn_keywords?post=509108"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}