Spain’s women’s national soccer team is the 2023 FIFA World Cup champion. It was a journey that wasn’t without controversy It started with its head coach, Jorge Vilda, and now has engulfed the head of Spanish soccer in a criminal investigation over his unwarranted kiss of a player.
It’s been dubbed kiss-gate. While no joke, it rings of SNL’s telenovela skit ‘Besos y Lagrimas.’ In the Me Too era, such actions have dire consequences, and it’s starting to overshadow the team’s championship win. It all started during the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup awards ceremony when Luis Rubiales, president of Royal Spanish Football Federation, kissed Jennifer Hermoso without her permission.
Rubiales tried to dismiss the criticism as that of overactive feminists, but that proved to be a fatal decision. He’s since been suspended from the Spanish Football Federation and facing an investigation by prosecutors for sexual aggression. From the government to the other officials and representatives within Spanish soccer, the consensus position is for Rubiales to resign, which he has yet to do (via NYT):
Spanish prosecutors said on Monday that they had opened an investigation into whether Luis Rubiales, the president of the country’s soccer federation, could be charged with committing an act of sexual aggression after he kissed one of the female team’s players on the lips when they won the World Cup this month.
Then late Monday night, after nearly six hours of intense discussions at an emergency meeting, the Spanish soccer federation issued a statement requesting that Mr. Rubiales “immediately present his resignation as president of the Royal Spanish Football Federation,” citing “the latest events and the unacceptable behaviors that have seriously damaged the image of Spanish football.”
Mr. Rubiales, 46, was shown on video after the World Cup final in Sydney on Aug. 20 kissing one of the team’s star players, Jennifer Hermoso. Although he apologized the day after, he took a defiant stand later in the week, saying Ms. Hermoso had lifted him off his feet and “moved me close to her body.” He has accused his critics of “false feminism,” saying he was the victim of “social assassination” and insisting that Ms. Hermoso had initiated the exchange.
Ms. Hermoso countered in a statement, “At no time did I consent to the kiss that he gave me.”
Opposition has steadily grown in response to Mr. Rubiales’s conduct and his strident defense of it, and the group he heads, known formally as Royal Spanish Football Federation, had found itself under increasing pressure to take action.
Megan Rapinoe also commented on this incident, saying the incident was a display of extreme misogyny. Rapinoe commenting on anything is usually poison. On this, I’ll take a more neutral position. Let the Spanish figure this out.