He arrived wrapped in noise. And he will leave shaken by a storm never seen before in Spanish sport. To Luis Rubiales, who was first a player, then a trade unionist (he presided over the AFE, Association of Spanish Footballers, and later the head of the Royal Spanish Football Federation (RFEF), he never liked discretion. He championed a direct, aggressive and controversial style in the management of his charges, skirting limits that should never be crossed. And then, she grabbed Jenni Hermoso by the neck on the podium in Sydney to give her a non-consensual kiss, shortly after putting her hand to her genitals in the box, not caring where she was. And, above all, who he represented, sharing the front row with Queen Letizia and Infanta SofÃa, together with Gianni Infantino, the president of FIFA itself, who later suspended him for 90 days from office. The farce that he and his surroundings have starred in since then -with his mother starting a two-day hunger strike, and his uncle denouncing his orgies supposedly paid for with public money- has stunned Spain already half the world Meanwhile, Rubiales is still trying to hold out in office.
Lopetegui’s dismissal
“I don’t feel betrayed, but we are forced by how things have been done,” admitted the new president of the Federation. He took office on May 18, 2018. And not two months later he fired the Spanish coach before his debut in Russia. The never seen. Rubiales did not accept that Madrid had made public the commitment with the Basque coach before the World Cup event, causing a schism in the group with the appointment of Fernando Hierro as interim coach. It was the former Madrid defender who held the position of sports director of the Federation, but in the face of the Lopetegui scandal, he was forced to abandon his suit and put on his tracksuit. Upon learning of the transfer to Madrid, the manager did not agree to his continuity, despite the fact that the team captains (Ramos, Iniesta and Silva) tried to stop his dismissal. It was not possible. The president of the Federation understood that the actions of both the Basque coach and the white club were intolerable. “It has happened without any information to the RFEF. I found out five minutes about the announcement, things cannot be done that way,” Rubiales denounced indignantly. “I know there will be criticism, but the values ​​of the Federation are above,” he specified then.
The pact (and commissions) with Piqué to bring the Super Cup to Arabia
It all started in March 2019 when Gerard Piqué, a Barça player at the time and president of Kosmos, contacted Rubiales to find a venue for the Spanish Super Cup in the Middle East. Once that plan was transferred to the Federation’s board of directors, the president achieved its approval by an absolute majority. Three years later (April 2022), it is denounced from Las Rozas that the Federation has suffered a computer attack where confidential documents had been stolen, including private audios between Piqué and Rubiales himself. There it is discovered that an agreement had been made, as revealed by ‘El Confidencial’, a commission of four million euros for Kosmos for opening the way for this Saudi business. But Rubiales maintains that “a clear, clean, transparent, honest and, above all, beneficial management for Spanish football” has been carried out, emphasizing that he is “victim” of “a prepared hunt” after they have stolen from him ” illegal” private conversations on your mobile.
The permanent fight with Thebes
The president of the RFEF and the president of LaLiga never understood each other. “For those who said it was a personal problem between Tebas and Rubiales, it turns out that for Rubiales it was his strategy and his way of understanding relations with professional soccer,” the president of the soccer association tweeted this past week. “It has been a constant in those years, without conspiracies or nonsense, just looking for constant tension,” denounced Tebas, who had previously warned that he had to “acknowledge that it has been very difficult to explain what is happening with Luis Rubiales these years. The misogynistic gestures, the profane expressions, the protocol disaster and the insults in this latest global embarrassment are not a surprise and had obvious antecedents,” Tebas said.
Juan Rubiales, the uncle he fired
“Luis has always been a man with a clear macho tinge, very arrogant and with attitudes typical of Torrente,” the president’s uncle denounced the newspaper ‘El Mundo’. In the first years of his mandate, Juan was director of the Federation’s cabinet, a position he assumed when his nephew agreed in May 2018. He was his most trusted man, with access to all federative affairs, until he he was fired from him. A dismissal that ended up in the courts uncovering, at the same time, several efforts full of controversy by Luis Rubiales. He denounced, for example, a party in the Salobreña chalet that would have been paid for with funds from the RFEF in what was supposedly a work meeting of the managers. “Boy, there’s a party this afternoon. I’ve talked to Nene and she’s bringing some girls. You’ve gone mad! They are 18 and 19 years old! They could be your daughters! When the girls arrive, I lock myself in the room and he says to me: ‘What’s wrong with you?’ And I tell him: ‘Well, I don’t want to participate in this,'” said Juan Rubiales. “You’re always like this, you’re annoying,” was Luis’s response, always according to the version given by his uncle. Court number 3 de Madrid has considered the dismissal of Juan Rubiales to be appropriate, in addition to considering the methods he used to discredit the president of the RFEF as proven.
The alleged spying on David Aganzo
The battle for power in Spanish football has not been limited to the fight between Rubiales and Tebas. It has also affected the AFE, an organization that he chaired for seven years (2010-2017), which denounced espionage by the Federation. A fight that also ended up in court when the federal entity leaked some audios of a meeting with leaders of the AFE and LaLiga. At all timesthe entity chaired by Luis Rubiales denied this alleged espionage and attributed it to an attempt to discredit the figure of the president. After what happened in Sydney, the official statement from the AFE chaired by David Aganzo was one of the harshest. “After the grotesque starring, Luis Rubiales should not continue to be one more minute in charge of the RFEF. We find it shameful that, once again, he has tried to justify his unfortunate attitude by putting our colleague Jennifer Hermoso in the spotlight, who was the only and authentic victim of the despicable episode carried out by Luis Rubiales after the final of the Women’s World Cup. Jennifer was the one who found herself in a position of weakness before a superior who incredibly wanted to present herself as the victim with her explanations in the Assembly”, argued the AFE .
The kiss that caused the fall
Rubiales did not detect “a position of dominance” at his “peak”, as he defined it from the outset, Jenni Hermoso after winning the World Cup in Sydney for the Spanish women’s team. In that speech, which lasted almost half an hour, before the Express Assembly, the president of the Federation went so far as to say that it was she who “raised him in her arms” and “brought him closer to her body”, which sparked the indignation of FIFA , who had been prudent in the first days after the scandal. He opened an informative disciplinary file to the leader. But hours after that incendiary message came Rubiales’ suspension for 90 days, irritated as he was by the explanation he had given about that kiss. “We hugged and I told him to forget about the penalty. She told me: ‘You are a crack’. And I told him: ‘A little bit?‘ And she told me: ‘Okay,’ “said the leader. At no time during that long presentation, in which he proclaimed up to five times that he was not going to resign, did Rubiales ask for an unmitigated pardon as he did, on the other hand, with his gesture of putting his hand to his genitals. There he did offer his apologies to Queen Letizia and Infanta SofÃa, while denouncing that they were “carrying out a social murder”, that they were “trying to kill” “A some powerful people are going to be upset that I’m here”, vehemently stressed the president of the Federation, who used the presence of his three daughters in the room to launch another plea, vehemently applauded by Luis de la Fuente, the men’s coach, and Jorge Vilda, the women’s world champion coach “I tell my daughters that they have to learn a lesson, which is dignity. You are feminists and not the fake feminism out there. They don’t care about people, they are preparing an execution,” Rubiales said.
