The trial of Luis Rubiales, former president of the Royal Spanish Football Federation, starts in Madrid on Monday. After Spain won the women’s World Cup in August 2023, Rubiales kissed player Jenni Hermoso during the medal ceremony. She says that the kiss was not consensual. Rubiales maintains that it was and, along with three of his colleagues, is alleged to have brought pressure to bear on Hermoso to change her story. If found guilty, Rubiales faces two and a half years in prison for sexual assault and coercion. His colleagues, accused only of coercion, could be sentenced to 18 months each.
A few minutes before the kiss, the camera shows Rubiales, next to Queen Letizia and her 16-year-old daughter, the Infanta Sofía, celebrating Spain’s victory by appearing to grab his crotch. Despite the outrage – national and international – he refused to resign. ‘I’m not going to resign,’ he repeated five times in an emotional speech to the Federation Assembly, adding with incredulity: ‘Because of a consensual peck?’ He held out for three long weeks but eventually bowed to the inevitable, losing his job with its annual salary of €675,000 (£567,900) and his position as a UEFA vice-president – worth a further €250,000 (£210,000) a year. Alluding to a ‘monstrous persecution’, he vowed to defend his ‘honour’ and his ‘innocence’.
Meanwhile in a separate case, Rubiales’s stewardship of the federation is also currently under judicial investigation. This inquiry centres on the deal that made Saudi Arabia hosts for Spain’s Super Cup tournament, but is also looking into a sex party allegedly paid for with federation funds. There have been police raids on the federation headquarters and on one of Rubiales’s properties. Rubiales, 47, the son of a politician, denies all wrongdoing.
Rubiales’s replacement as president, Pedro Rocha, didn’t last long: he was soon being investigated for corruption, too (he is still being investigated). Then just before Christmas, it was announced that the federation was to be headed by Rafael Louzán, a former politician who was found guilty of malfeasance in 2022. That conviction didn’t stop an overwhelming majority of the delegates voting him into office. Indeed, cynics suggest that it may well have counted in his favour, suggesting that during his tenure it would be business as usual at the federation. No wonder many Spaniards regard the nation’s football administration as a cesspit of corruption and mismanagement.
One Spanish journalist wrote of Louzán’s election with heavy sarcasm: ‘What better way to avoid scandals than by choosing someone who’s already been convicted? This way we’re spared the accusation, the judicial process and the guilty verdict… These are the federation’s traditions after all and we must respect them.’ He’s right about the long association with corruption: Rubiales’s predecessor, Ángel María Villar, who was president of the federation for almost three decades, was arrested in 2017 on suspicion of embezzlement, fraud and collusion (he was later released on bail, but stepped down from his position).
Meanwhile, in striking contrast to the administrators, Spain’s footballers are excellent. Not only are the women currently world champions but the men won the UEFA European Championship in 2008, 2012 and 2024 and the FIFA World Cup in 2010. In that sense then Spanish football is a microcosm of Spanish society. The people who do jobs with tangible results – footballers, waiters, doctors, shop assistants, for example – tend to do them well, but corruption and self-serving incompetence are endemic in the more opaque realms of administration and politics. And if their crimes do come to light, the playbook for politicians is the same as for the football administrators: deny everything and refuse to resign.
Spain is gearing up to co-host the men’s 2030 World Cup. Rubiales’s trial couldn’t have come at a worse time.
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