Luis Rubiales did not wait to land in Spain to apologize. "I have no choice," he said. Faced with the wave of criticism and demands for his resignation for his unexpected and inappropriate kiss on the mouth of Jenni Hermoso, the president of the Federation, under pressure and the uproar created, retracted in a video recorded at the Doha airport, in the scale made by the new world champions between Sydney and Madrid. "Surely I was wrong, I have to admit it", the leader began his message about the episode during the medal delivery ceremony on the pitch of the Stadium Australia, where he took the head of the Madrid striker with both hands before kissing her.
“We have a wonderful relationship. It is a moment of maximum effusiveness. Without any bad intention or bad faith on both sides, it happened very spontaneously. Here we saw it natural and normal, but outside it seems that a stir has formed, ”he continued. On a day where the soccer players had to grab the headlines, Rubiales stole space from the protagonists in state and foreign headlines due to the discomfort of an attitude contrary to the equality between men and women that society pursues.
"If there are people who have felt hurt, I have to apologize," said the president, who made it his homework to "learn from this and understand that when you are president of an institution as important as the Federation, you have to, especially in the ceremonies, be more careful”. And it is that Rubiales did not skip the protocol only with Hermoso, but also lost his manners in the box of the stadium, sitting near Queen Letizia and the Infanta Sofía. The highest representative of Spanish football touched his genitals and pointed to someone who was on the pitch to celebrate the victory.
These out of place gestures were followed by his reprehensible defense of the kiss to Hermoso after the game. “It is a peak of friends celebrating something. We are not for bullshit," said a Rubiales at the Cope, around midnight on Sunday in Spain, who called the offended "idiots", "stupid", "idiots" and "losers".
About 15 hours later he changed his speech to sing the mea culpa in his own way. “When I say that it seems idiotic to me, it is because inside nobody gave it the slightest importance, but outside it did. I also want to apologize to those people”, she added about the insults uttered on the radio, in addition to explaining that he was “sorry” for having “tarnished” the “greatest success of women's football”.
However, the damage was done. The image of him with Hermoso, already for posterity, had provoked before his pardon a barrage of voices against it, many from government officials. “We must all be careful in our attitudes and actions. It is unacceptable to kiss a player on the lips to congratulate her. We all deserve respect", criticized the Minister of Culture and Sports, Miquel Iceta, who urged the federation president to "give explanations and make excuses". It was no less the Minister of Equality, Irene Montero, who delved into the importance of "consent" and called the kiss a "form of sexual violence" suffered by women in a "daily and until now invisible" way.
In the same sense, the Minister of Social Rights and the 2030 Agenda, Ione Belarra, pronounced: "If they do that with all of Spain watching, what will they not do in private." The General Secretary for Esport of the Generalitat de Catalunya, Anna Caula, requested the resignation and pointed out that "this is not only about football, it is about the fact that the view is still not equal and that there is still a lot of work to be done".
For her part, Yolanda Díaz accused the leader of having "harassed and assaulted a woman." "His excuses are useless at all," added the second vice president of the Government, who invited him to leave office, as did the Association for Women in Professional Sports and the Government delegate against Gender Violence, Victoria Rosell, among others. . It is not the first time that Rubiales has been at the center of controversy, investigated several times by the courts and still awaiting the judicial resolution regarding the commissions of the contract that brought the Spanish Super Cup to Saudi Arabia.
