{"id":18004,"date":"2026-05-06T14:33:52","date_gmt":"2026-05-06T14:33:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/18004\/"},"modified":"2026-05-06T14:33:52","modified_gmt":"2026-05-06T14:33:52","slug":"fifa-extends-gianluca-prestianni-homophobia-ban-globally-could-miss-first-two-world-cup-games","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/18004\/","title":{"rendered":"FIFA extends Gianluca Prestianni homophobia ban globally, could miss first two World Cup games"},"content":{"rendered":"

Argentina\u2019s Gianluca Prestianni could miss the opening two matches of this summer\u2019s World Cup after FIFA accepted UEFA\u2019s request to extend his ban for homophobia worldwide.<\/p>\n

The Benfica forward was involved in an incident with Real Madrid forward Vinicius Junior during a Champions League game in February. Vinicius Jr had alleged that Prestianni had racially abused him, which Prestianni denied on social media. An investigation led to Prestianni being given a six-match suspension<\/a> for homophobic conduct on April 24.<\/p>\n

Three of the six games are suspended for a two-year period and the suspension only applied to UEFA-organised competition, meaning that Prestianni has already served one match of the ban after being banned \u201cwithout prejuduce\u201d for the play-off second leg<\/a> against Madrid on February 25 while the investigation was ongoing.<\/p>\n

After the ban was announced, UEFA confirmed that it requested that FIFA, global football\u2019s governing body, apply the suspension globally.<\/p>\n

A FIFA spokesperson said on Wednesday: \u201cThe FIFA Disciplinary Committee has decided to extend the six-match ban imposed by UEFA on SL Benfica player Gianluca Prestianni to have worldwide effect.\u201d<\/p>\n

If called up to the Argentina squad for the World Cup in the United States, Canada and Mexico, Prestianni would not be eligible to face Algeria and Austria in the nation\u2019s first two fixtures. The 20-year-old has only been capped once by the reigning World Cup champions but was included in March\u2019s squad for friendlies against Mauritania and Zambia.<\/p>\n

Prestianni remains able to feature in Benfica\u2019s last two Portuguese league matches of the season against Braga and Estoril Praia \u2014 as well as Argentina\u2019s friendly against Honduras on June 7 \u2014 as \u201cworldwide effect\u201d only applies to UEFA competitions or competitive FIFA games.<\/p>\n

The incident took place February 17 in the first leg of the Champions League play-off round at Benfica\u2019s Estadio da Luz.<\/p>\n

\u201cI want to clarify that at no time did I direct racist insults to Vini Jr, who regrettably misunderstood what he thought he heard,\u201d Prestianni said in a statement after the game. \u201cI was never racist with anyone and I regret the threats I received from Real Madrid players.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\n Prestianni denied racially abusing Vinicius Jr (Angel Martinez\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n

After speaking to Vinicius Jr, referee Francois Letexier signalled the start of FIFA\u2019s racial abuse protocol by crossing his wrists above his head. The match was stopped for around eight minutes and Madrid\u2019s Kylian Mbappe said after the match that he heard Prestianni \u201csay that Vinicius is a monkey, five times\u201d.<\/p>\n

Regarding incidents of discrimination, UEFA\u2019s regulations say that anyone \u201cwho insults the human dignity of a person or group of persons on whatever grounds, including skin colour, race, religion, ethnic origin, gender or sexual orientation, incurs a suspension lasting at least ten matches or a specified period of time, or any other appropriate sanction.\u201d<\/p>\n

UEFA declined to comment when asked by\u00a0The Athletic\u00a0why Prestianni\u2019s ban was not for 10 matches or more.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Argentina\u2019s Gianluca Prestianni could miss the opening two matches of this summer\u2019s World Cup after FIFA accepted UEFA\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":18005,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[4027,187,5852,82,100,83,1743],"class_list":{"0":"post-18004","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-madrid","8":"tag-argentina","9":"tag-champions-league","10":"tag-fifa-mens-world-cup","11":"tag-madrid","12":"tag-premier-league","13":"tag-real-madrid","14":"tag-soccer"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18004","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18004"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18004\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18005"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18004"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18004"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18004"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}