Home / Football / Champions League News A disgrace to football: Trent on Vinicius incident England full-back says alleged racism 'is disgusting.' Written by Tom Rostance Last Update: February 17, 2026 10:36:04 pm GMT 2 min read Real Madrid defender Trent Alexander-Arnold called the events during his sides win over Benfica a disgrace to football after team-mate Vinicius Jr was the victim of alleged racist abuse. The Brazil forward scored the only goal of the Champions League tie in Lisbon.He then spoke to referee Francois Letexier and went and sat down in the dugout as play was halted for around 10 minutes after Letexier made a crossed arms gesture to signal racist abuse.Alexander-Arnold told Amazon Prime: I cant comment too much on it as it will be an ongoing investigation but what happened tonight is a disgrace.He [Vinicius] has been subjected to this a few times in his career and its a disgrace to football. Theres no place for it in football or society. Its disgusting.Its upsetting. We as people come here to do a job, we enjoy what we do and when something like that happens it ruins the night for all fo us. We stick together as a team, dug deep and got the win and we are proud of how we handled it in a hostile environment. The punishment is out of our hands. Hopefully justice is involved in what happened.Manager Alvaro Arbeloa said: Everyone can see what happened, we have to fight against racism. Its the most important thing in football.We support Vini of course. We have to fight against this attitude.He wanted to play on. We deserved to score more goals. Topics: Jose Mourinho Real Madrid CF S.L. Benfica Trent Alexander-Arnold Vinicius Junior Follow us: Tom Rostance Tom has been writing about football - and other sports - for almost 20 years. He has covered four summer Olympics and many, many, many football matches from the World Cup final to the bottom of the EFL. Read more from Tom Rostance
