Right up until the moment that Luis Rubiales took the microphone at the Spanish federation on Friday afternoon, senior figures in Uefa were adamant he would resign. The expectation had even stopped some prominent football officials publicly speaking out.
What followed, even for a sport like this, left many involved “speechless”. It says more than any statement, mind, that Rubiales’s “jaw-dropping political speech” – to use the words of one shocked source – probably wasn’t the most consequential moment of the day. All of this will eventually lead to real action, way beyond words or Spanish football.
In terms of the most immediate effect, Fifa has now suspended Rubiales for 90 days and ordered him not to contact the player he kissed on the lips after the World Cup final, Jenni Hermoso.
Four official complaints against Rubiales are now being investigated and they could ultimately see him banned from sport for anything between two to 15 years.
“This is the end,” Miquel Iceta, Spain’s minister for culture and sport, told El Pais. “This can’t continue like this.”
And yet it went on a bit longer. Iceta’s comments were before the farcical late-night statement outlining how Rubiales’s federation would take legal action against the Futpro Union representing Hermoso, while insisting the president “has not lied” through the use of still images in an attempt to show Hermoso had initiated the incident.
It felt like a point of no return, if only the latest.
That deepens the question over why Rubiales didn’t just resign, although many would point to a total income from the role and connected positions of almost €1m a year. Others would point to a belligerent defiance when “cornered” that sums up his personality. It has similarly led to open comment in Spanish football about how this could be a precursor to a political career. Rubiales’s statements blaming “false feminism” undeniably played into the culture-war sentiment that Spain’s far-right party Vox has long been trying to court.
This is what has finally set Rubiales in open conflict with the Spanish squad, after what has really been months of build-up.
It has also brought the most significant and symbolic effect. The Spanish squad admirably came together as one, creditably supported by many of their colleagues around the women’s game as well as Spanish clubs and some male footballers, to declare they would not play for the national team while “the current management” remains at the federation. It has been quite a move – and almost the grim inverse of one of midfielder Aitana Bonmati’s supreme turns – for the country’s senior football body to turn the glory of a World Cup win into such a global public relations disaster, which is just about the most generous description. The women’s world champions currently don’t have a team. Going up against your now hugely popular winners is quite the position. The front page of Marca declared it all a “global embarrassment”, which echoes the mood of most of Spain.
There are multiple other layers to this, a landmark moment for football as a whole.
One of the main arguments has been what a rightful shame it is that the players’ glory has only seen a man’s behaviour being discussed, and that this is the man who represents Spanish football on the global stage. It is in some ways both a separate story, though, and one more deeply fundamental to the squad’s achievements. Some of those achievements, of course, are successfully demanding better standards for women’s football that ultimately served their World Cup win.
This is where there is a wider context to “little more than a kiss”, as Rubiales so provocatively put it.
Even after Spain’s semi-final victory over Sweden, the federation chief was the first figure from the Spanish camp to publicly mention the player mutiny that framed this campaign, talking about “people with resentments” with a similarly provocative tone. It was impossible not to interpret all of this in terms of his own sense of personal vindication for standing by Jorge Vilda and facing down rebellious players, all of which translated into this belligerent triumphalism in the moment of victory. What else does the infamous crotch-grabbing symbolise other than “I’m the man?”
And yet it is that very triumphalism that could lead to his downfall, “the end”, as Iceta put it.
Spain’s World Cup win has been overshadowed by Rubiales’s behaviour
Those very celebrations have now led to a situation where Hermoso has now said: “I want to make clear that not in any moment did the conversation occur that Mr Luis Rubiales references, and much less that his kiss was consensual. In the same way I want to reiterate how I did in that moment that what happened was not enjoyable.
“I felt vulnerable and a victim of aggression, an impulsive act, sexist, out of place and without any type of consent from my part. In short, I wasn’t respected.”
Hermoso then spoke about how she, her family, friends and teammates “have been under constant pressure to come out with some sort of statement that would justify the acts of Mr Luis Rubiales”.
One of the most striking and important lines of Fifa’s statement announcing Rubiales’s suspension was the directive that he is not allowed contact her or her “close environment”.
Rubiales has been criticised for his conduct at the World Cup final
