It seems that the seat of the president of the Higher Sports Council (CSD) is burning, a tribune overlooking the university city of Madrid, with its pine trees and its silent avenues: there are five officials in five years, our sport is a merry-go-round.
In this five years, María José Rienda, Irene Lozano, José Manuel Franco and Víctor Francos have sat in that office, some of them for a very brief period of time, as in the case of Francos (barely six months), and now they will José Manuel Rodríguez Uribes (55), manager who has been a politician, more than an athlete.
Rienda, who had been a top-class skier, with World Cup victories in the giant, had been a bet for Pedro Sánchez: she had spent a year and a half in office, from June 2018 to January 2020, and in that lapse of time had persisted to carry out the new Sports Law, a project that ended up seeing the light in January of this year.
(The old rule was already old, it was from 1990).
The same Pedro Sánchez who had appointed Rienda was the one who decided to dismiss her (he was informed of the dismissal by a phone call) to replace her with a technocrat he trusted, Irene Lozano, a journalist and writer who was going to deal with the pandemic and the black out. of world sport, and that he would never get along with athletes, federation presidents or bureaucrats. Four months before the 2020 Tokyo Games (they were held in the summer of 2021), she was jumping out of her seat.
He was followed successively by José Manuel Franco and Víctor Francos, presidents conditioned by the fratricidal struggles on the football stage. Franco spent more than two years in office, longer than any of his contemporaries: he was the president of Spanish sport in Tokyo 2020, he approved the reform of the Spanish anti-doping law and promoted the process of professionalization of women's football, he intervened in the investigation by alleged corruption in the soccer Super Cup (the power of the petrodollar is inscrutable) and he also had to roll up his sleeves in the Negreira case.
Víctor Francos, in office from June until today, dealt with the Rubiales case: he had to propose the reform of the Spanish Football Federation, a reform that has never been rounded off. Rubiales has disappeared from the scene, but Pedro Rocha, his interim successor, hypothetically in transit, has clung to the chair while awaiting elections.
Now, Víctor Francos has said enough. Covered by “professional reasons” (not revealed until now), he has given José Manuel Rodríguez Uribes the CSD office, with green views.
Yesterday the Council of Ministers appointed Rodríguez Uribes. He is from Valencia and has a PhD in Law, and has spent years navigating the worlds of culture and sports.
He had held that portfolio, that of Minister of Culture and Sports, between January 2020 and July 2021: it was going to be he himself, under that ministerial power, who would call Rienda to remove her as president of the CSD and Lozano to appoint her as his replacement. .
Between Rodríguez Uribes and Irene Lozano, in a subordinate position, they managed the covid sports crisis. Thousands of Spanish athletes spent months locked in their training centers, fearing for their future, while they saw their performance decline. Many of them breathed a sigh of relief when they found out that the Tokyo 2020 Games would be held in the summer of '21.
Since October 2021, Rodríguez Uribes had been Spain's permanent ambassador to UNESCO, a position that will now be held by Miquel Iceta. Rodríguez Uribes' sports missions bring curves. Beyond the Euro Cup and the Olympic Games next summer, the CSD must make the professionalization of women's football a reality, not an abstract project, and definitively reconvert the Spanish Football Federation.
