Vinicius Gets a Four-Game Ban and Will Miss El Clasico After His Hair Pull

Update, October 14: The disciplinary committee has banned Vinicius for four matches, two for the hair pull and two for his protests, which rules him out of El Clasico on October 25.

Update, October 15: Vinicius has spoken about the ban for the first time, after playing in Wednesday’s Champions League win at Roma. He said the four-match length surprised him, pointed to the fouls he suffers, and asked referees to protect attacking players, the Associated Press reports. That section is added below.

Update, October 16: The federation’s Appeals Committee has rejected Real Madrid’s appeal in full, so the ban stands at four matches. Madrid have taken the case to the Administrative Court of Sport (TAD), the last domestic route. That section is added below.

Vinicius Junior scored, celebrated, and was then sent off for the act that made the goal possible, all inside a 20-minute substitute appearance on Saturday. The Real Madrid forward pulled Nathan Saliba’s hair in the build-up, a VAR review caught it, and his goal became a straight red card instead, Reuters reports.

What actually happened in the 20-minute cameo?

A benching, a goal and a dismissal, in that order. Vinicius was left out of the starting side by Jose Mourinho after a run of poor form and came on in the 52nd minute with the match scoreless, ESPN reports. Diomande put Madrid ahead 11 minutes later. Vinicius then finished a Jude Bellingham pass and thought he had doubled the lead, with Mourinho sprinting onto the pitch to join the celebration, until the review showed his hand in Saliba’s hair as he raced past him at the start of the move.

Why did a hair pull bring a straight red and not a yellow?

Because Spanish rules classify it as violent conduct, not as a foul. Reuters reports that the federation’s regulations treat pulling an opponent’s hair that way, and the referee’s report added a second problem: it recorded that Vinicius disputed the decision and had to be restrained by team-mates. Antonio Rudiger got between him and referee Isidro Diaz de Mera, talkSPORT reports. The same offence ended Athenea del Castillo’s night in Washington a few hours later, in a week when Soucek’s penalty row showed the other side of review, a wrong call with no VAR to fix it.

How much of El Clasico was at stake in the ruling?

All of it, and it has gone. The sanction for violent conduct without injury ran from one to three matches, and Madrid’s next three league fixtures were Sevilla, Barcelona on October 25 and Racing Santander. A one-match ban would have been a nuisance. The committee’s four-match total, with the protests priced on top, takes Vinicius out of the biggest fixture of the autumn and a fourth game besides, which is why the length of the ruling, not the red card itself, became the story.

Why did nobody from Madrid face the press?

Because the manager chose silence over risk. Mourinho did not attend his news conference and sent nobody in his place, ESPN reports, with TNT Sports reporting he feared a comment that would bring him his own ban for the Sevilla and Barcelona games. Midfielder Aurelien Tchouameni did speak to the club channel and said he did not understand the red card, a view the written referee’s report is unlikely to soften. Madrid have been here before this season with a disciplinary case running into a big fixture, the same pattern as Ronaldo’s provisional suspension with Portugal, where the process became the story.

What has Vinicius done since the final whistle?

Apologised, then argued by repost. His own post said sorry to the team and the fans, Reuters reports. SportBible reports he then reshared a fan page post listing fouls committed on him this season that did not produce red cards, and replied with laughing emojis. That second act matters: it turns an apology story into a consistency row, the kind that tends to follow a player into a disciplinary hearing, much as the card itself followed Cucurella’s very different encounter with a red card earlier this season.

What does the referee’s report change about the ban?

It moves the likely range from one-to-three matches to two-to-three. In his match report, referee Isidro Diaz de Mera recorded that Vinicius pulled an opponent’s hair while the ball was in play, without the ball being contested between them, SportBible reports. That wording matters because Article 130.1, the one-to-three-match range for violent conduct during play, gives way to Article 130.2 when the act happens away from the immediate action of play, and 130.2 carries two to three matches. The report also recorded his protests after the dismissal and that team-mates had to restrain him. COPE reports Madrid are braced for three matches and plan to appeal in the hope of reducing it to two, SportBible reports, and a two-match precedent exists: Mallorca defender Johan Mojica was banned for two matches in May for pulling an opponent’s hair. The disciplinary committee announced its decision on Wednesday, and priced the protests separately, taking the total to four matches. Club sources have also told The Athletic, via talkSPORT, that Mourinho’s press-conference boycott was a deliberate choice to avoid talking himself into a ban for Sevilla and the Clasico.

What does the published VAR audio add to the case?

It shows the decision being assembled, not announced. Mundo Deportivo has published details of the video-room conversation, YSscores reports: VAR Alejandro Muniz Ruiz advised Diaz de Mera to review the move for possible violent conduct, and when Muniz Ruiz’s audio began cutting out, the referee asked assistant VAR Pulido Santana to take over the conversation instead. At the monitor, the video room explained that Vinicius had pulled a Villarreal player’s hair in the same attacking phase as the goal, Diaz de Mera asked for a wider angle to judge the phase, and a voice in the room is reported to have called the clip one that deserved a red card, YSscores reports. The outcome the audio ends with is procedural: play restarts with a free kick, and Madrid’s No. 7 is sent off. None of that changes the ban arithmetic in the referee’s written report, but it removes any doubt about how the goal came to be reviewed at all: the hair pull, not the finish, is what the video room sent him to the screen for.

Why is his camp calling the red card fair and unfair at the same time?

Because the complaint is about consistency, not the decision. A source close to Vinicius told The Athletic that the red card is fair, but that officials forgot the rule against Valencia, Sports Illustrated reports. The reference is January 2025, when Valencia goalkeeper Stole Dimitrievski appeared to pull Vinicius’s hair during Madrid’s 2-1 win there and went unpunished, while Vinicius was dismissed for shoving him in reaction. Villarreal defender Juan Foyth, on the other side of Saturday’s incident, took a similar split view: The Sun reports Foyth said the red card was warranted but that he did not think Vinicius meant to hurt anyone. Spanish media have added one more thread for the committee to weigh: El Chiringuito and COPE report an allegation that Vinicius pushed a league employee as he left the pitch, LiveScore reports. That claim is reported, not confirmed, and neither the referee’s report extracts published so far nor the club has verified it. COPE also reports Madrid intend to appeal the sending-off despite rating their own chances as limited.

Why did the ban come out at four matches, not three?

Because the committee priced the afternoon as two offences, not one act with an argument attached. Two matches cover the hair pull itself, classified as behaving violently while not in a position to challenge for the ball, Reuters reports. The other two cover what followed the red card: arguing with the referee in an aggressive manner, to the point where team-mates had to restrain him, theScore reports. That split is why the total ran past the two-to-three-match range the referee’s report wording had suggested, and past the two-match Mojica precedent. The committee also recorded that the club had not supported its case with evidence able to disprove the referee’s report, USA Today reports.

What did Vinicius say about the ban after the Roma match?

He said the punishment does not fit the act, and that referees treat him differently. Speaking after Madrid’s 4-3 comeback win at Roma in the Champions League on Wednesday, hours after the ban was announced, Vinicius said he does not recall another player receiving a four-match suspension, that he had tried to move the player in front of him and got caught in his hair, and that he said no offensive word to the referee, the Associated Press reports. He pointed to a statistic he has seen: 500 fouls suffered, producing five red cards for the offenders, while the yellow cards land on him and on attacking players generally. His request was for protection for players who bring something different, naming Lamine Yamal at Barcelona and Julian Alvarez at Atletico. In a separate interview reported by Athlon Sports, he also questioned the timing, saying he learned of the ban when he arrived at the stadium, and said the new rule behind it had never been explained to the players. Mourinho backed the timing complaint in stronger terms, asking whether it was normal for a player preparing for a major European match to learn of a four-match ban two hours before kickoff, on the bus to the stadium, the Associated Press reports.

The Roma night carried a second thread. Vinicius, who has not scored for Madrid since August and has two goals for club and country this season, was replaced in the 59th minute with Madrid 3-1 down, the Associated Press reports. His replacement, Endrick, equalised in the 85th minute and Antonio Rudiger won it in the 90th. Vinicius acknowledged a slump, said he had no doubt the goals would return, and pointed to the six-year extension he has signed. The ban, notably, does not touch nights like this one: it is domestic only, so his October continues in Europe while Spain waits.

What did the Appeals Committee throw out on October 16?

All of it, on both halves of the ban. Madrid’s appeal asked for the two-match red-card sanction to be rescinded, or failing that for Article 121.1 of the Disciplinary Code to be applied instead of Article 130.2, citing precedent from earlier hair-pulling incidents, which would have reduced the penalty to one match, AS reports. On the protest half, the club asked for the extra two matches to be cancelled, arguing Article 127 should not apply, or at minimum that Article 118.1, which covers warnings, should have been used instead. The committee rejected every strand. On the red card, it found no obvious material error by referee Diaz de Mera and held that Article 130.2 was correctly applied because the ball was not in active play, which makes two matches the minimum under that article. Fabrizio Romano confirmed the outcome, and Madrid’s response was immediate: the case goes to the Administrative Court of Sport, the TAD, Sportsnaut reports.

What happens next in this case?

A TAD decision, then a month of league football without him. The first appeal has failed, and the arithmetic of the remaining one is unforgiving: only a reduction to a single match would return him for the Clasico, since the Barcelona game is the second of the four, and the TAD route now has to move inside a week to matter even for that. As it stands he misses Sevilla, the Clasico at Camp Nou on October 25, Racing Santander and Valencia, and returns to league action after November’s international break, Reuters reports. The ban is domestic only, so his October continues in the Champions League: the Roma comeback on Wednesday was the first of those European nights, and Leipzig and AEK Athens follow inside his league absence. For a player who began Saturday on the bench for form reasons, the strangest part of the punishment is its shape: for the next month, Europe gets Vinicius and Spain does not. The club’s wider war with the league escalated the same day the appeal failed, as Madrid demanded La Liga president Javier Tebas resign over his Goebbels comparison, a fight about the same refereeing coverage that runs underneath this ban.

Ahead of the Clasico that Vinicius misses, Jose Mourinho fired back at Fermin Lopez over the refereeing row, answering the Barcelona midfielder’s complaint about Madrid’s talk about referees with a pointed reply of his own.