00:02Yeah, I'm going to answer it in English, if possible, so I can be a bit clear about what I'm
00:08saying.
00:09But it's a difficult topic because I think it happens in this day and time anyway,
00:18where these types of topics are even more difficult to discuss, it seems, than it used to be in the
00:22past.
00:22So you have on one side, because I watched the game live, I tried to watch the Dortmund game,
00:32but it was on Prime apparently, so I didn't have the right thing.
00:36So I ended up watching Madrid and Benfica and I was really intrigued by the game.
00:43So I saw it happen live and then there's a couple of different components to this story.
00:51There's first, there's what happens on the pitch.
00:53Second, there's what's happening with the fans as well.
00:58Third, there's what happens after the game.
01:00And for me, in those three things, there's some clear separations we need to make.
01:05So what happens on the pitch for me, you have Vinny Jr.
01:07who, when you watch the action itself, his reaction cannot be faked.
01:13You can see it, his reaction is an emotional reaction.
01:16I don't see any benefit for him to go to the referee and put all this misery on his shoulders.
01:23There is absolutely no reason for Vinny Jr. to go and do this.
01:27And he does it.
01:28And when he does it, I think in his mind, he's doing it more because it's the right thing to
01:32do in that moment.
01:34So he goes and does it.
01:35And next to him, you have Kylian Mbappe, who normally always stays quite diplomatic and on every side.
01:43And Kylian Mbappe is really clear about what he heard and what he saw.
01:47And he's even more clear after the game when he speaks about it.
01:50So all of this happens.
01:52But then, of course, you have a player who's hiding what he's saying in his shirt.
01:58And on the end, you have this side of it, which I think is a little bit OK.
02:04You have a player who's complaining.
02:06You have a player who says he didn't do it.
02:08And I think unless the player himself comes forward, it's difficult.
02:12It's a difficult case.
02:13So I understand this.
02:15But then in the background, you see in the stadium, there are people doing monkey signs.
02:22It's happening in the stadium as well.
02:24It's happening.
02:25You can see it.
02:26It's in the video.
02:27So it happens.
02:28You have on one side the altercation between the players.
02:31You have on the other side what happens in the stadium as well.
02:35And then for me, even worse, and I'm clear on what I say, is what happens after the game.
02:44So after the game, you have the leader of an organization, Jose Mourinho, who attacks the character of Vinicius Jr.
02:59by bringing in the type of celebration to discredit what Vinicius is doing in this moment.
03:05And for me, in terms of leadership, it's a huge mistake.
03:09And it's something that we should not accept.
03:11So I'm very clear on that.
03:13On top of it, he mentions the name of Eusebio.
03:17To say that Benfica cannot be racist because the best player in the history of Benfica is Eusebio.
03:23You know what black players had to go through in the 1960s?
03:26Was he there to travel with Eusebio every away game?
03:29When he went to every place in Europe?
03:31Probably at the time, because my dad is a black person from the 1960s also who made his way.
03:36Probably at the time, the only option they had is to be quiet and to say nothing and to be
03:41above it.
03:42And to be ten times better, to get a little bit of credit and people say, actually, he's good.
03:47That's Eusebio's life.
03:48Probably.
03:50And today, to use his name to make a point about Vinicius Jr., who's actually finally in a situation where
03:58he can say something about it.
04:00There's a lot of players who play in different leagues still in Europe who don't have a voice.
04:05This players today in Hungary, in Bulgaria, in Serbia, if something happens to them and they are black players, they
04:11have zero chance to have any kind of support.
04:14Vinicius Jr. at least is in a situation where a lot of people have made it possible for him to
04:23take this moment and to protest in this moment.
04:29You know, and then I'm thinking how it is that you can, so I'm not, I'm not, it's a difficult
04:37thing for me to speak about because to be honest, in many ways, and I say it very honestly, I
04:42don't actually fit in what I see today in the world that is happening in the world.
04:46Me personally, I don't see my place in a lot of the things that are happening in today's world.
04:50I really don't. So I don't want to be a part of one group. I don't want to be a
04:56part of the other group.
04:57But if I see the situation with the player, I would like to see a situation where my dream is
05:05that at the end of the situation,
05:08if it is true that the player from Benfica said something as bad as what he said, I would love
05:15a situation where there's still a room where somebody can apologize.
05:19And say, I'm sorry, I made a mistake. And this has an impact on the sentence as well.
05:25So the sentence should be A or B. But if you admit that you've made a mistake, there should be
05:31an opportunity as well to say that, hey, nobody's perfect.
05:35This is also a good step, you know, but we are taking away all these options because we are creating
05:41left or right and black and white.
05:42And you have to be on one side or on the other side. And actually, the one thing you can't
05:48do is punish someone unfairly.
05:51And the one thing you can't do is dismiss a person and attack the character of a person who's complaining
06:00about something he experienced and something that must be very painful to that person.
06:07So there's something that needs to happen. And I'm just thinking, I'm sorry, I'm going on this, but I'm just
06:15thinking, you know, when Jose Mourinho is doing the knee slide at Old Trafford,
06:19when he goes to, because he attacked the celebration of Vini Junior, when he goes to the fans in the
06:25semi-final Inter Milan against Barcelona,
06:27and he goes in front of the Barcelona fans and does the celebration, when he plays against Sevilla with AS
06:33Roma,
06:33and in that moment he's fighting with the referees and the referees have to go under protection, leave the country
06:39under protection after that game.
06:41In that moment, if someone was racist to Mourinho, I would have hoped that all of us would say, stop,
06:48it doesn't matter his celebration.
06:50Let's listen to what he has to say. And let's defend some simple things, some core things.
07:00So, but again, even in that sense, I try to be, I like to give context.
07:07So, I have to still say that I know so many players, and I'm thinking about the situation, who have
07:17gone through it.
07:17And it's important to, I mean, it's happened to Eto'o, to Samuel Eto'o, it's happened to Mario Balotelli
07:27so many times.
07:28OK, so it was their celebration as well? OK, maybe they had some, there were some characters with personality.
07:35What if it happens to Patrick Vieira? What if it happens to, it happened to me?
07:41You know, 20 years ago, I was in Sevilla. And then we're going to say, oh, it was 20 years
07:45ago.
07:45OK, I was in, Betty Sevilla, I was there. We checked Teote.
07:49Check Teote is a player from Newcastle who died with a heart attack when he went to China.
07:53An unbelievable person, like a heart of gold.
07:57Both of us were 18, 19, we go to this game and you have the Betty Sevilla fans going on
08:03the fences,
08:05singing Ku Klux Klan, doing monkey chants, going on the fences like monkeys.
08:10And we played a game. I was happy to score a goal in that game as well because of this.
08:15And it happened back then. So was it my celebration as well?
08:20Or was it, what did I do, you know?
08:22And at the same time, I have to note something.
08:25It was also one of the most beautiful moments in my career
08:28because the Betty Sevilla fans of the general stadium started to boo against the Ultras from Sevilla, from Betis.
08:39So you had a fight within the stadium of fans who were not happy that the Ultras from Betis Sevilla
08:46were doing these things,
08:47who were protesting. And I found this beautiful because I said, OK, you know the world is not perfect.
08:54You have so many things, so many situations, but at least you have people from the same club fighting because
09:00they don't accept this.
09:01You know, so it was it was also a moment. But then you fast forward and I'm a coach now,
09:06not so long ago.
09:07And I told you this story not so long ago. I go to Club Rouge and I played for the
09:12national team.
09:13I was the captain for the national team. And me, my staff, we get called brown monkeys and so on.
09:20And after I complain, I see how all of these politics happen again to kill the story.
09:27So no consequences, no nothing. And I have a voice.
09:31What do you think for the people without a voice?
09:33The problem is not necessarily the incident. The problem is how after that everything gets put in motion
09:41to basically sort of I don't think I'm sorry, I'm going because I'm thinking about this as well.
09:54But but so what you see and what you feel when you grow up with these issues is that somehow
10:05somewhere down the line,
10:07this translates into maybe lack of opportunity, because what happens is that you get pushed further and further away.
10:16You get branded more and more into one way. And actually what needs to be done to grow closer together
10:22takes a lot of time,
10:23takes a lot of effort. But what happens is exactly the contrary.
10:26You get put into what you get pigeonholed into one group and the other one gets pigeonholed into the other
10:30group.
10:31And you just grow further apart. And so my thought about this is and now I'm going to finish on
10:36this because you've opened up something for me here.
10:39But I'm going to finish on this. In the end, I'm not saying go left and kill or go right
10:49and kill.
10:49That's not what I'm saying. Deep down, I know I've met 100 people who worked with Jose Mourinho.
10:56I've never heard a person say anything bad about Jose. All the players who played with him, they love him.
11:02So I understand the person he is. I understand he's fighting for his team, he's fighting for his club and
11:08he's made that decision.
11:10And you cannot be a bad person and have all the ex-players you've had talk so positively about you.
11:19So I know he's a good person. I don't need to judge him as a person, but I know what
11:23I've heard.
11:24And I understand maybe what he's done, but he's made a mistake.
11:31And it's something that hopefully in the future won't happen like this again and that we can move forward and
11:40grow.
11:42And hopefully, yeah, I mean, look at the things that we can do together rather than the things that always
11:50constantly separate us.
11:52Yeah.
11:53You have touched. Thank you very much.
11:55Yeah, sorry, thank you.
11:56Thank you, Vinny. Okay.
11:57Smong.
12:06Thank you, Vinny.
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