The dismissal in recent days of Luis Rubiales, suspended from his position by FIFA and waiting for the Government to disqualify him definitively in the next few hours (when the TAD allows the Higher Sports Council to do so), has put the feet of the horses to the two coaches of the senior teams, Jorge Vilda, of the women's, and Luis de la Fuente, of the men's, both men of the highest confidence of Luis Rubiales and both noted for their vehement applause for the Granada leader in his speech at the extraordinary assembly last Friday at the Ciudad del Fútbol de Las Rozas.
The current Federation chaired by Pedro Rocha has already shown its intention to get rid of the ballast that everything associated with Rubiales entails as soon as possible, and at the meeting of territorial presidents on Monday it became clear that Jorge Vilda has marked the cross. The question is no longer whether he is going to continue or not, but to find the formula to dismiss him. For more embarrassment, in the assembly on Friday Luis Rubiales, in his speech, renewed Jorge Vilda live and in an unprecedented gesture made public that he tripled his salary, which went from 180,000 euros to half a million a year for the next four years , all this amid great applause from the assembly members, some of whom, those who now want to terminate it by fast track.
In the case of Luis de la Fuente, the decision of the new leaders of the Federation is not clear. Although they have expressed that they intend to undertake "a deep and imminent organic restructuring in strategic positions of the Federation to give way to a new stage of management in Spanish football", the feeling is that this is not going to affect, for the moment, the selector. Although the assembly did not like his subservient behavior towards Rubiales at all, there are several factors that help him to maintain his position. The first, that immediately and by means of a statement to stand out and criticize the ways of Rubiales. Later, he explained to his close friends that at all times in the assembly he believed that Rubiales was going to resign and therefore that he was deceived. Furthermore, in the case of De la Fuente, with whom Spain recently won the League of Nations, time is on his side. This Friday he has to give the list for the matches against Georgia and Cyprus qualifying for the 2024 Euro Cup in Germany. Three days after giving the call, being left without a coach would be for the new Federation to get into another rather undesirable puddle.
On the other hand, dismissing the selectors is not something that can be the responsibility of the territorial commission, but a function of a board of directors, for which there is now no date. In the Federation there is talk these days of calling a new extraordinary assembly that could ratify much more important issues.
Vilda's position is more compromised, and not because of the applause for her boss at the assembly on Friday. His position hangs by a thread for several reasons that are much more weighty in a coach who has always been in the eye of the hurricane and who has never been liked by the players to the point that more than a year ago fifteen of the best raised a mutiny and they refused to return to the team while Jorge Vilda was in charge of it.
The case had its epilogue with another letter signed by the 23 players selected once and world champions: "After everything that happened during the Women's World Cup, we want to state that all the players who sign this letter will not return to a call for the Spanish team if the current leaders continue," they wrote in a statement to which many others joined.
Vilda is also blamed for alleged pressure on Jenni Hermoso to appear in the apology video that Rubiales recorded on the stopover in Doha during the return trip, something to which the Madrid woman refused.
But there is more. Despite the fact that Vilda also ended up issuing a statement against Rubiales, up to eleven members of her coaching staff have made their position available to the RFEF to show their support for Jenni Hermoso. Among them, Montse Tomé, the one who was his second and who was going to be sports director of women's football. Vilda has it in Chinese.
