Was Luis Rubiales’ resignation really necessary?

Luis Rubiales, the embattled Spanish football chief, has bowed to the seemingly inevitable and resigned from both his positions as president of the Spanish football federation and UEFA vice president. He made the announcement during an interview with Piers Morgan on TalkTV and then confirmed his decision in a subsequent statement for the press.

Rubiales had been suspended for 90 days by Fifa following the now infamous kiss with Spanish captain Jenni Hermoso (which he says was consensual and she says wasn’t) at the medal ceremony after his country’s triumph in the Women’s World Cup final last month. ‘I cannot continue my work,’ he told Morgan, adding that ‘insisting on waiting and holding on is not going to contribute to anything positive, neither to the federation nor to Spanish football.’

There was no hint of contrition in Rubiales’ announcement – at least in the portion of the interview which has been released (it will be broadcast tomorrow in full). Nor, it must be said, was there anger, just the weary resignation, as it were, of a man who tried to defend himself but found the forces ranged against him to be insuperable. 

Those forces included: the entirety of the Spanish squad (who said they would refuse to play while he remained president), the wider women’s football community (the Lionesses released a statement of support) and the Spanish men’s team which expressed their ‘solidarity’. Added to this were the Spanish government (the acting deputy prime minister Yolanda Diaz called for him to resign) and the vast majority of the press. All lined up to condemn Rubiales, with some going as far as to characterize him as emblematic of wider societal, patriarchal oppression. 

Rubiales’ supporters, or at least those prepared to speak up for him publicly, were few and far between. His federation did initially stand by him, but their support soon melted away. There was his redoubtable mother, Angeles Bejar, who even went on hunger strike for him. There was Danny Cunning, the kit man at Scottish club Hamilton Academical where Rubiales played four games in 2009, who called the Spaniard, in Glaswegian parlance, ‘brand new’ (a decent person) and revealed he had given him a £500 tip when he left.

And then there was Woody Allen, who understands a bit about sex scandals, media pile ons and cancel culture. The veteran director was asked about the matter at the Venice film festival and said:

It was only a kiss, and it was a friend. What’s wrong with that?…It was clearly in front of everyone, and she was not in danger…He should ask for forgiveness and assure (her) that he will not do it again. And with that they should both move on. 

Rubiales never stood a chance.

But Rubiales’ troubles are far from over. Hermoso has filed a criminal complaint against him for sexual assault. If prosecuted and convicted he could face between one and four years in prison. Rubiales is also under scrutiny by the Spanish government, as the Administrative Sports Court (TAD) has initiated its own investigation. He will be spending the immediate and perhaps foreseeable future in consultation with his lawyers. Even if he doesn’t go to jail, it looks highly unlikely he will ever work in football again. He may struggle to find any kind of employment.

At the risk of being condemned forever as a chauvinistic pig I’m going to come out and say that this is wildly disproportionate, if not a little mad. No one would dispute that Rubiales behaved inappropriately, boorishly, at the World Cup final. He was clearly out of control: his grabbing his crotch while standing next to the Queen and her daughter indicated a man for whom the occasion had awakened his inner cavemen. And his claim that the kiss was consensual seems dubious when considering the footage. He behaved badly. A quick and fulsome apology was certainly in order.

But, but, but…was what he did really so egregious? It was a kiss, spontaneous and brief and for which an apology was offered. And it was a kiss that Hermoso and her teammates appeared to be laughing and joking about on the bus on the way out of the stadium. Does Rubiales deserve to lose his livelihood and his reputation and have his life and those of his family blighted for losing his head in a few moments of euphoric over exuberance? 

Maybe. But if you really think so, and haven’t just aligned yourself with the fashionable and seemingly majority opinion on the matter, then we are going to need a whole new set of rules to govern interactions between the sexes in the workplace, including the sporting arena. That could mean separating the sexes entirely or requiring written consent for any form of physical contact beyond a handshake. Oh, and whatever those new rules and punishments are, we are going to have to be mindful of gender equality and apply them in both directions.

That should solve the problem, but what a miserable, joyless, and silly world that would be.