The Athletic FC. Welcome to the Athletic FC podcast with me, Ayel Akimwalere.

Real Madrid's 1-0 Champions League player first leg win at Benfica on Tuesday night was

overshadowed by alleged racist abuse suffered by goal scorer Linysius Jr. coming up, we'll break down what happened,

discuss the reaction and also what might happen next.

All right, with me in the studio, we've got Jay Harris. We've also got Dermott Corrigan,

who's in Spain as well. Right, Dermott, amidst what did happen, what I enjoyed seeing, was a fabulous goal by Vinnie

Jr. a player who's had quite a tricky season so far, but yet again, comes up Trump's

for Real Madrid when he's needed. Talk us through that goal. Yeah, trademark goal for

Vincius Jr. for sure. It was a hardfall game. Van Fika had come out all guns, blazing, trying to do again what they did last month to Madrid in the 4-2 and really overpowered them and outplayed them. But Madrid got a foothold in the game and then started to take control, really. But it was still very tight. And then five minutes into the second half, Mbapet played the ball down the line to Vincius, who had a bit of space, but he went straight for the Benfica right back, backed him into the box, made space for the shot, and then curled a really sweet shot up over the keeper Truban, who's huge, into the far top corner. And it was a real trademark Vinicius Jr. goal. And then he went to celebrate, with trademark celebration from Phenisius as well and then it all kicked off from there.

Yeah. trademark Venisius Jr. goal. And then he went to celebrate with trademark celebration from Vincius as well. And then it all kicked off from there. Yeah, for sure. I mean, Jay, this is why we love football, isn't it? For goals like that, it's why we pay our tickets to go watch a football match to see extraordinary moments from football players. Yeah, definitely. Marino said a lot of things after the game, which were maybe not the most pleasant.

But one thing he did say was that there are only two players in the world who can score that goal, Vinicius Jr. and Mbap, and he's bang on with that. It was a beautiful goal. And as you sort of alluded to in the question you asked over, it's been a really tricky season for Vincius Jr. with what happened when Jabby Alonzo was in charge, etc. I think it's only a second goal in the Champions League this season and this is someone we associate with performing on

the big night. So incredible goal, incredible moment, but we're probably not going to talk about it again

for the rest of the show. That's exactly why I wanted to get it over and done with because the

goal was fantastic but there were also some rather unsavory moments in the game at Dermere.

Firstly, talk to us about Vinny's yellow card.

The referee's interpretation of his celebration.

You talked about the celebration earlier.

Why would he have got a yellow card for that?

You'd have to ask the referee for the full version on that,

but what it looked like was,

Vinesis goes to the corner flag to dance and it's, there's a lot of angry Benfica fans in the stadium who had already been on Vincius back earlier on in the game on all of the Madrid players,

but especially Videscius back during the game and he celebrated right in front of them.

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