Pedro Rocha will officially be the new president of the Spanish Football Federation from Monday with a mandate until September, which in practice means exhausting what was Luis Rubiales' mandate. Pedro Rocha, former president of the Extremadura Federation and former president of the Management Commission, has been the only one of those who announced that he was going to run for the presidency of the Federation who has managed to gather the 21 endorsements a few hours before the deadline. necessary.
The other candidates, such as the journalist Carlos Herrera or the Catalan politician Eva Parera, daughter of the former Barcelona manager, Antón Parera, have fallen far short of getting them.
The deadline to present endorsements expires at midnight. By mid-afternoon today, Rocha had presented 107 endorsements, 77 percent of the total (138 assembly members), after adding another 17 this morning to the 90 that he registered the previous day at the Electoral Commission.
Therefore, only 31 of the 138 members that make up the organization have not given their support to the Extremaduran manager at the time of writing these lines. Carlos Herrera has not revealed how many endorsements he had obtained and lawyer Eva Parera claimed to have only seven.
Each assembly member can only endorse one candidate. This is dictated by the new ministerial order that regulates elections in sports federations approved last January (42/2024), which also provides that if there is a single candidate for the presidency, the electoral board will proceed to directly proclaim it.
If only Rocha's candidacy is formalized, the vote on May 6 will not be reached. The deadline for the final proclamation of candidatures is April 15, if there are no resources, and if there are, this will be delayed to Friday the 26th.
The electoral calendar foresees that the candidacies will be provisionally announced tomorrow, the date on which Pedro Rocha is precisely summoned to testify as a witness in the Court of First Instance and Instruction number 4 of Majadahonda (Madrid) in the Brody case. The court is investigating alleged irregular contracts linked to the Federation in the last five years, during the presidency of Luis Rubiales, such as the one that assigned the works of the La Cartuja stadium (Seville) to the company Gruconsa, or the contract that transferred the Super Cup to Arabia Saudi.
Pedro Rocha (Cáceres, 1954) was the previous economic vice president of the RFEF and has chaired its Management Committee since Rubiales resigned in September, after being banned by FIFA for three years for his behavior in the Women's World Cup final.
Before the elections were called, Rocha already resigned from re-election as president of the Extremadura Federation that he has commanded since 2013 with the intention of continuing to lead the RFEF. The leader defends his continuity "to guarantee the stability and unity that the entity needs at a particularly complex time."
The TAD must now decide whether to file Rocha for exceeding his duties, according to a complaint filed by Miguel Ángel Galán, president of the National Center for Soccer Coaches (CENAFE), sent at the time to the Higher Sports Council (CSD).
The new ministerial order that regulates federation elections prevents anyone who is disqualified from holding administrative positions or disqualified in the sports field by a final resolution of a sports court, national or international federation from being president. In January, the TAD already filed a complaint by Galán against the Management Commission.
