Arsenal and France legend, Thierry Henry has expressed sympathy for Vinícius Júnior following the alleged racial abuse directed at him by Benfica winger Gianluca Prestianni.

Henry voiced his support for the Brazilian forward, stressing he can feel his pain and understands what he is going through because he suffered similar fate in his playing career.

The CBS Sports pundit said he had also been called a monkey in the past while reacting to the incident that led to Benfica’s match against Real Madrid being temporarily suspended for 12 minutes.

“I can relate to what Vini Jr. is going through. It happened so many times to me, I talked about it so many times after the games. I’ve been accused of looking for excuses after games when it happened to me."

"So at times you feel lonely because it’s your word against his word. I have been called a Monkey before so i can feel his pain."

"And because we don’t know what Prestianni said, as he was very ‘courageous’, he put his shirt over his mouth to make sure we don’t see what he said, so clearly you already look suspicious, because you didn’t want people to see or read what you said,” said the French legend.

He also challenged Benfica winger, Gianluca Prestianni to come out and tell the world what he said to Vinicius Jnr

“Then, the reaction of Vini Jr. is telling me that something not right happened. Vini can tell his side of the story and Prestianni I’m sure will not tell us what he actually said because I saw Mbappé confronting him and he told Kylian ‘I didn’t say anything’, well, you must’ve said something at the very least,” he added.

JE