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Luis Rubiales may be suspended as head of Spain’s football federation, but the controversy surrounding his non-consensual kiss of forward Jenni Hermoso is unlikely to die down anytime soon.
The football chief’s suspension by global football governing body FIFA’s disciplinary committee on Saturday did little to quell the anger surrounding Rubiales’ actions and the Spanish football federation’s apparent tolerance of sexism within the organization.
At sporting events across Spain this weekend, athletes expressed their solidarity with Hermoso and called for greater action to be taken to address the problem. At a match against FC Almeria, the members of the FC Cádiz team held up a banner that read “We are all Jenni” as the crowd chanted “Rubiales, resign!”
The star footballer herself appeared for the first time since the controversial kiss at a match on Saturday in Alcalá de Henares, looking on as the players of the FC Milan and Atlético de Madrid teams joined arms before a sign saying “We are with you, Jenni.”
A mass protest to show support for Hermoso and the Spanish women’s football team was scheduled to be held in Madrid Sunday night.
The intensity of the public reaction to the Rubiales affair appears to have finally made the country’s national football federation (RFEF) comprehend the gravity of the incident.
After a week in which the organization initially dismissed the crisis and later backed Rubiales’ attacks on Hermoso’s credibility, the federation changed tactics on Sunday and announced that it would summon the heads of Spain’s 19 regional football federations to attend an “extraordinary and urgent” meeting in Madrid on Monday to assess the impact of the crisis.
The meeting is set to be chaired by Pedro Rocha, head of the Extremadura region’s football federation and interim president of the national federation during the 90-day suspension of Rubiales dictated by FIFA. But it’s not clear how many of Spain’s regional football bosses will show up at the gathering.
Since Friday at least a dozen of them — including Rafa del Amo, head of the Navarra region’s football federation and president of the the country’s National Women’s Football Committee — have resigned their posts in disgust with the national organization.
Those who do attend the meeting may not respond well to Rocha, who is widely seen as Rubiales’ right-hand man. The disgraced federation boss effectively guaranteed his deputy would be his successor on Friday morning by uniting the organization’s eight vice-presidential positions under Rocha.
Spain’s World Cup-winning women’s football team last week said that they would not play under the federation’s current leadership. Rocha, who has served alongside Rubiales since 2018, will be hard-pressed to prove that he represents the “change” the athletes seek.
Scrambling for cover
But unless Rubiales is fired, elections for a new head of the organization are not scheduled to be held until the fall of 2024.
On Saturday evening, two of the federation’s most important figures clambered to distance themselves from Rubiales.
After being filmed giving the boss a standing ovation during his speech on Friday, in which Rubiales decried the “scourge of false feminism,” Luis de la Fuente, the head coach of Spain’s national men’s football team, released a statement condemning the suspended FA chief.
“I absolutely reject any act of sexist violence,” De la Fuente wrote. “There is no room for lukewarm positions when dealing with this type of situation.”
Shortly afterward, Jorge Vilda, the head coach of Spain’s women’s team who similarly cheered Rubiales on during his tirade against political correctness, released a similarly worded statement calling the actions by Rubiales “inappropriate and unacceptable.”
Both statements were met with scorn on Spanish social media, with many calling the men hypocrites and demanding their immediate resignations.
Of the two, Vilda appears to be the one whose job is in most immediate jeopardy. The head coach is understood to be among the leadership under whom Spain’s female football players refuse to serve and his continuance as head coach will no doubt be discussed by the regional federation presidents during the meeting on Monday.
On Saturday, the entirety of Vilda’s coaching staff resigned in order to express their “strongest and most emphatic condemnation of the conduct shown by the president of the Spanish football federation.” In their resignation letter, the staff said they had been forced to attend Rubiales’ defiant speech on Friday morning and that female members had been required to sit in the front row in order to convey support for the football boss.
Spain’s acting Minister of Finance María Jesús Montero on Sunday applauded the national women’s football team and said the government would work to ensure that Rubiales “never again has a leadership position in Spanish football.”
“We cannot have our country’s football sector in the hands of a person who lies, who has shown that he does not understand anything about the fight for equality in sport,” she said.
