Madrid Xtra@MadridXtra
🚨 Vincent Kompany defends Vinicius Jr and criticises Jose Mourinho:
"It's a difficult topic. I watched the game and was really intrigued by it. There are two different components to the story."
"First, what happened on the pitch - second, what happened with the fans as well. And then there's what happened after the game. We need to separate them. When you watch the action itself and how Vini reacted, that reaction cannot be faked."
"You can see it was an emotional reaction. I don't see any benefit for him to go to the referee and put all this misery on his shoulders. In that moment he saw that it was the right thing to do."
"Kylian Mbappé normally always stays diplomatic, but he was very clear about what he saw and heard. Then there's the Benfica player who was hiding what he was saying in his shirt. In the stadium you can see there were people doing monkey signs, it's in the video."
"And for me, what happened after the game is even worse. José Mourinho has basically attacked the character of Vinicius Junior by bringing in the type of his celebration to discredit what he was doing at that moment."
"It was a huge mistake in terms of leadership. On top of that, Mourinho mentioned the name of Eusébio. He said Benfica cannot be racist because their best ever player was Eusébio. Do you know what black players had to go through in the 60s? Was he there to travel with Eusébio every away game and see what he went through."
"To use his name today to make a point about Vini Jr. To be honest, I don't actually see my place in a lot of things that are happening today, so I don't want to be part of one group or the other."
"I met 100 people who worked with José Mourinho. I've never heard someone say something bad about José. All his players love him. I understand the person he is, I understand he fights for his club. I know deep down he's a good person."
"I don't need to judge him on that. But I also know what I've heard. I understand what he's done, but he made a mistake. Hopefully it won't happen again in the future, and we can move on together."
