After the recent racial abuse controversy between Vinicius Junior and Benfica’s Gianluca Prestianni during a Champions League match, FIFA president Gianni Infantino has suggested the prospect of red cards being shown to players who cover their mouths during confrontations with opponents.
During the first leg of the playoff match, Prestianni approached Vinicius while covering his mouth with his jersey. Vinicius and the other Real Madrid players accused the Argentine of using racist words, which Prestianni has denied.
Speaking to Sky News, Infantino said, “If a player covers his mouth and says something, and this has a racist consequence, then he has to be sent off, obviously.”
“There must be a presumption that he has said something he shouldn’t have said, otherwise he wouldn’t have had to cover his mouth.
“I simply do not understand – if you don’t have something to hide, you don’t hide your mouth when you say something.
“That’s it, as simple as that. And these are actions that we can take and we have to take in order to be serious about our fight against racism,” he added.
During the 140th Annual General Meeting of the International Football Association Board (IFAB), a decision was taken to assess measures for the World Cup.
Mark Bullingham, England FA CEO and IFAB member, said, “You can see when a player is talking to an opponent, there are very few circumstances where they should need when they’re confronting them to cover their mouth.”
“But we need to look at everything and make sure if we were to bring the rules change or penalty for that, that we’re not going to create further problems.
“There’s a process that we’ll go through, but there is a desire to bring something relatively quickly.”
