Moira Donegan
Sun, 3 September 2023
It was a moment of superlative achievement for Jenni Hermoso, the prolific scorer on Spain’s women’s national team. The 2023 tournament was Hermoso’s third World Cup – and, at 33, it may well have been her last. But it was the first Women’s World Cup she had won: in fact, the first Spain ever won. Sweaty and exhilarated, Hermoso joined her teammates after the match for a medal ceremony, a moment that for any athlete would mark the pinnacle of her career. And then Luis Rubiales, a Spanish soccer official, decided to make the moment about him. He grabbed Hermoso, in front of television cameras and thousands of onlookers, and forced his mouth on hers.
Hermoso, in that moment, was demeaned and downgraded by Rubiales, denied her triumph, stripped of her status, and shown not as the victorious athlete that she was, but as a woman, subject to men’s violence and whims. It was supposed to be the high point of her career; instead, he made it the moment when she was internationally humiliated, subjected to a sexual assault broadcast around the world.
Hermoso and her team had, in that moment, bested all their rivals for the World Cup title, and had prevailed in a difficult final match against England’s formidable national team, the Lionesses. But Rubiales made sure that she could not prevail over the gendered hierarchy, could not forget, even at her moment of accomplishment, that she was still vulnerable to the likes of him.
“I did not like it,” Hermoso later said of the kiss, on Instagram. The kiss, she said, was “an impulse-driven, sexist, out-of-place act without any consent on my part”.
The Spanish soccer federation initially backed Rubiales and threatened to sue Hermoso and the other players who complained; Hermoso alleged that she had faced pressure from soccer officials to downplay Rubiales’ behavior. “No person, in any work, sports, or social setting, should be a victim of these types of nonconsensual behaviors,” she said in a statement.
Rubiales claimed that the kiss was consensual, though he has backtracked and issued a tepid apology, saying in a video statement, “Surely I was wrong, I have to admit. It was without bad faith at a time of maximum effusiveness.” For his part, he continued his celebrations at the medal ceremony in an incident in which he stood next to the Spanish queen and her 16-year-old daughter, and grabbed his crotch.
The incident has sparked outrage in Spain and across the soccer-loving world, in part because no one was exactly surprised. Spain’s victory in the Women’s World Cup was an unlikely surprise precisely because of the rampant sexism that has long characterized the Spanish soccer authority and the women’s national team leadership.
Before the tournament, the Spanish team was facing long odds, because a dozen of their best players were on strike – to protest against sexism. The Spanish team’s two most recent coaches, Ignacio Quereda and Jorge Vilda, both faced accusations of sexist, controlling and aggressive behavior. The striking players have also complained, like the US women’s national team, of receiving lower pay and inferior facilities compared with their male counterparts.
In 2020, Rubiales stood trial for allegedly assaulting a female architect who was working on his home. According to the architect, Rubiales inflicted injuries to her ribs and wrist that took nearly a year to heal. A court found Rubiales not guilty, and the incident did not lead to Rubiales’ ouster from Spanish soccer.
Nor did the publications of audio recordings in which Rubiales can be heard allegedly arranging for specific Spanish teams to gain entrance to tournaments. And nor did accusations that Rubiales was embezzling soccer federation funds and spending them on private parties and personal travel. Rubiales, who has not been convicted of any corruption charges, has refused to step down following each of these successive scandals and has always denied wrongdoing. His assault on Hermoso is no exception.
For all the impunity he seems to enjoy at the head of Spanish soccer, Rubiales never had the athletic talent that Hermoso has
For all of the gruesome machismo of the kissing incident, Rubiales’ behavior illustrates something essential to the phenomenon of sexual harassment: how frequently it is a matter of contradicting women’s talents and achievement, and knocking them down.
For all the impunity he seems to enjoy at the head of Spanish soccer, Rubiales never had the athletic talent that Hermoso has. He had a brief and unremarkable early career as a defender before abruptly ending his time on the field to join the management side of the soccer business. He never played for clubs of the prestige that Hermoso plays for; he never developed, as she has, a signature style of play; he never played on a national team or in a World Cup; he never scored goals in anything like the numbers she does.
Hermoso is more talented than he is, and she is also younger, by 13 years. She is better than him, and she is the future. Faced with her achievement, her talent, her youth, perhaps Rubiales felt his own pathetic, boorish inadequacy reflected back on him. He reached for the most ready source of power that he could wield against her: his sex.
Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist
Complaints stack up against Luis Rubiales – and not just over his forcible kiss of a World Cup soccer star
Atika Shubert, CNN
Mon, Sep 4, 2023,
As the furor over that infamously unwanted kiss circles around Spain’s Football Federation chief, Luis Rubiales, some may be surprised to learn that the initial complaint wasn’t filed by the woman he kissed, but a man watching the match in Madrid.
Miguel Ángel Galán was watching with pride as Spain won the Women’s World Cup. His joy turned to disgust when Rubiales planted that forceful kiss on the team’s star striker, Jenni Hermoso.
Within minutes, Galán, the head of the National Training Center of Football Managers, said he was drafting an official complaint to the Spanish government’s High Council of Sport (CSD).
“It was a sexist and intolerable act. A chauvinist act, by a president who is already plagued by corruption scandals and sexism,” he told CNN on Thursday. “Those are the two structural problems of the Federation in Spain: corruption and sexism.”
Clearly, there are many in Spain who agree. Hundreds have turned out in protest against Rubiales. Spain’s women’s team has refused to play until Rubiales is removed. And Hermoso herself reiterated that she did not appreciate or consent to her boss’s boorish behavior at the World Cup.
“I felt vulnerable and the victim of an impulse-driven, sexist, out-of-place act,” she said in a statement.
Rubiales initially tried to stem the damage by recording a half-hearted video apology. But when that didn’t assuage public anger, he doubled down in a widely-broadcast Royal Spanish Football Federation (RFEF) meeting and defiantly refused to resign, to the applause of the mostly male audience. In his latest statement, he said he made “some obvious mistakes” but had been treated unfairly.
‘Political regeneration’ needed
Since Galán filed that first complaint against Rubiales on August 20, the day of the World Cup final, 15 more complaints have been filed to the CSD, both by organizations and individuals, ranging from allegations of sexual assault to abuse of power, according to a spokesperson at the CSD. In his most recent statements, Rubiales consistently denied any wrongdoing.
Although he has an official role, unofficially Galán is the long-time nemesis of Rubiales and RFEF, where Galán has made it his mission to call out corruption.
He tells CNN he has filed more than 50 complaints, some of which led to the arrest of previous federation president – Ángel María Villar, who oversaw Spanish football for almost 30 years – on corruption charges and the walls of Galán’s unassuming office in Madrid are papered with the headlines of football scandals he has brought to light. The uproar over the kiss, he told CNN, is just the beginning of a longer fight.
“What really needs to be done now is new, clean elections,” Galán told CNN, referring to an upcoming vote for the presidency of the Spanish soccer federation, “so that women can participate in the institution. Then, through these elections in the Federation, there can finally be a political regeneration.”
As the scandal grows, even members of Rubiales’ own family have turned against him. His uncle, and former chief of staff, Juan Rubiales, told Spanish newspaper El Mundo that he had witnessed his nephew using RFEF funds to host private parties and romantic getaways, as well as soliciting commissions from Saudi officials to host Spain’s Super Cup in Saudi Arabia.
“I was not surprised by that at all,” Juan Rubiales told El Mundo of the kiss. “He is an extremely arrogant man who has not acted as a President should. Instead of being a political leader, he wanted to be a warrior who sees ghosts and enemies everywhere. In the end, his own worst enemy was himself.”
CNN has reached out to both Luis Rubiales and RFEF about the allegations made by Juan Rubiales. Neither has responded.
When the furor over the kiss broke, Spain’s prosecutor had already been investigating Rubiales for influence peddling and bribery since last summer, according to CSD documents obtained by CNN.
Rubiales has consistently denied all allegations of corruption in the past.
He has been provisionally suspended by FIFA while a disciplinary hearing is underway.
‘The entire model has to change’
Steeped in tradition, RFEF has long ruled over the nation’s lucrative football fortunes. But the entry of women footballers into the professional, higher ranks has been a catalyst for change as they demand equal pay and rights, exposing the structural problems within Spanish soccer, says Beatriz Álvarez, president of La Liga F, Spain’s top women’s league.
“This is not solved with the resignation of Luis Rubiales, this requires a process of change and an absolute restructuring of the model and concept of the Football Federation itself,” said Álvarez. “I think there are many people close to Rubiales who promote this corrupt system … It is unacceptable, it shows that more than the president has to change, the entire model has to change.”
Álvarez, a former footballer herself, has had her own disagreements with Rubiales.
Months into her new job at La Liga last summer, still nursing a newborn, Álvarez said she requested a videoconference meeting with Rubiales. But the Federation chief refused, Álvarez says, telling her to focus on being a good mother at home and to delegate her work duties to someone who could meet him at his office in person.
The unwanted kiss at the World Cup, she says, is just an extension of this same attitude.
“It didn’t surprise me. It paints a portrait of who Luis Rubiales really is. The person some of us knew privately but now the whole world can actually see him,” she told CNN. “I believe it is divine justice that it is women’s football, which (he) ignored his whole career, that is finally removing this man from the Federation.”
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