Final Friday night time, Spain’s ladies’s crew performed their first recreation since Luis Rubiales was discovered responsible of sexual assault for kissing Jenni Hermoso after the 2023 Ladies’s World Cup closing.
Spain got here from 2-0 down in opposition to Belgium in Valencia with 20 minutes left to win an exhilarating recreation 3-2. Hermoso was not concerned, having once more been disregarded of the squad by coach Montse Tome. However she was on the minds of many.
At this time throughout Spain – Belgium. A lady and her daughter went to the match to provide assist to Jennifer Hermoso even when she was not within the call-up. pic.twitter.com/7jQnW530OW
— Laia Cervelló Herrero (@Laia_Cervello) February 21, 2025
A day earlier, choose Jose Manuel Clemente Fernandez-Prieto discovered Rubiales, the previous president of the Spanish Soccer Federation (RFEF), responsible of sexual assault and issued him with a positive of greater than €10,000 (£8,300; $11,400) for the kiss on Hermoso as she obtained her World Cup winners’ medal. The choose discovered Rubiales and his three co-defendants — former ladies’s coach Jorge Vilda, ex-Spain males’s crew sporting director Albert Luque and former Spanish Soccer Federation (RFEF) advertising director Ruben Rivera — not responsible of coercion for his or her efforts to influence Hermoso to publicly say she had consented to the kiss. Rubiales intends to enchantment the choice.
The 2-week trial at Spain’s Audiencia Nacional, the nation’s excessive courtroom, in San Fernando de Henares close to Madrid demonstrated the RFEF’s lack of respect for Hermoso and her team-mates, going again lengthy earlier than the World Cup.
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The Rubiales-Hermoso courtroom case revealed a lot – and the story is just not full but
Spain had been removed from their greatest in Friday’s UEFA Nations League recreation. Belgium’s opening aim adopted a mistake by crew captain Irene Paredes, who was among the many nationwide crew gamers known as as witnesses to the trial in Madrid. However they confirmed spectacular collective effort in staging a fightback.
“What we wish is to win video games,” Arsenal’s Mariona Caldentey mentioned within the stadium’s blended zone afterward. “It’s been a tough few months for everybody. Now the sentence is out, all the things’s been mentioned and completed, we’ve come out to win — and in the long run, we’ve completed it.”
Lately elected RFEF president Rafael Louzan attended the sport in Valencia and has spoken a couple of new period of openness and inclusivity.
However, for a lot of of these inside ladies’s soccer in Spain, the sensation is that the battle for full respect and equality goes on.
After the World Cup closing in Sydney, many in Spanish society and soccer spoke about an pressing want for reform. At a second of intense world focus, Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez and different authorities ministers shortly known as for motion and alter.
As soon as FIFA suspended Rubiales and the eyes of the world drifted away, the impetus for actual change and modernisation on the federation’s Las Rozas headquarters additionally began to stall.
Rubiales’ handpicked successor Pedro Rocha shortly fired Vilda as coach, however changed him together with his assistant, Tome, who had been in that function on the 2023 World Cup. Hermoso was not known as up in her first squad, with Tome claiming she wished to “shield the participant”, which she was requested about when she gave testimony within the Rubiales trial. Tome advised the courtroom Hermoso was not chosen for “sporting” causes and that “defending her got here into that due to the state of affairs we had been experiencing”.
Vilda’s former assistant and present Spain ladies’s coach, Tome (Jose Miguel Fernandez/NurPhoto)
It was Hermoso and her colleagues who helped drive the primary actual adjustments. Eighty-one nationwide crew gamers mentioned they’d not play for the crew till severe reforms had been made to finish structural sexism on the federation.
After an ungainly stand-off — which required mediation from gamers’ union FUTPRO and authorities intervention — interim president Rocha agreed to some measures. He fired figures deemed a part of Rubiales’ inside circle when he was on the RFEF — former common secretary Andreu Camps, integrity director Miguel Garcia Caba and communications director Pablo Garcia Cuervo.
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The Rubiales-Hermoso courtroom case revealed a lot – and the story is just not full but
Extra of Rubiales’ closest associates had been pressured out in March 2024, together with authorized adviser Tomas Gonzalez Cueto, when Spanish police raided the federation’s headquarters as a part of an investigation into alleged corruption throughout Rubiales’ time in cost that’s nonetheless within the evidence-gathering section. Rubiales and Cueto have each denied any wrongdoing.
Rocha himself was investigated as a part of that operation — and the Spanish authorities tried to drive him out too however he denied being concerned in any corruption and clung on to energy. Because the political and authorized struggles continued, makes an attempt to implement higher buildings for girls’s soccer had been stymied.
“We may hardly do something,” FUTPRO president Amanda Gutierrez tells The Athletic of her organisation’s lobbying on behalf of its members, together with Hermoso. “There have been many conditions we wished to speak about and negotiate, but it surely was not doable. They might not take vital selections as Rocha was not a everlasting president.”
An absence of professionalism and concern for the crew was once more proven in November 2023, when Paredes, Ivana Andres, Esther Gonzalez and Caldentey missed a key Nations League recreation in opposition to Switzerland as a consequence of errors in submitting the official squad to UEFA after which the teamsheet on the day of the sport.
The federation did rent Markel Zubizarreta as sporting director of girls’s soccer in November 2023, filling a job Vilda had occupied alongside his teaching function.
Zubizarreta was the architect of Barcelona’s all-conquering ladies’s crew — who gained 16 trophies, together with 4 league titles and two Champions League trophies — and was revered by the gamers. However lower than 12 months later he left to grow to be world sporting director at Michele Kang’s Kynisca Sports activities group, which runs U.S. aspect Washington Spirit, Lyon in France and London Metropolis Lionesses.
“One of many adjustments we requested for was to have a correct choice course of for hiring employees, not simply putting pals or contacts in roles,” Gutierrez says. “Markel was completely certified, with large expertise within the sector. However we had the dangerous luck that Kang got here and made him a suggestion he couldn’t refuse.”
Throughout the latest trial, the prosecution identified that, earlier than the World Cup, the federation had in place a “protocol of motion in opposition to sexual violence”, below which Rubiales’ actions after the ultimate ought to have been punishable.
Rubiales admitted whereas giving proof to having ratified this protocol “in a rush” simply earlier than the World Cup, below strain from the federal government, however claimed to not know its contents. Hermoso and Tome testified they weren’t conscious it existed.
Rubiales throughout his trial in Madrid (Thomas Coex/AFP through Getty Photographs)
Within the weeks after Sydney, FUTPRO made a proper grievance to a Spanish authorities physique, which in March 2024 mandated the federation replace this protocol and ensure everybody on the RFEF find out about it.
Requested whether or not these adjustments had been made, an RFEF spokesperson replied: “The issue right here earlier than was not the laws that existed, it’s that they weren’t utilized. This can be a new period, Rubiales and his individuals are all gone now, the distinction with the previous is like night time and day.”
The trial additionally confirmed how Hermoso was left utterly alone after occasions in Sydney, as all the federation equipment was put in place to guard Rubiales — actions that led to the prosecution cost of coercion in opposition to the 4 accused on the trial.
A lot of the employees concerned in that operation now not work on the RFEF. A few of those that nonetheless do — similar to ladies’s crew press officer Patricia Perez — had been absolutely supportive of Hermoso as they gave proof on the trial.
Different figures nonetheless on the federation weren’t so clear. Tome appeared to attempt to steer a impartial course. Luis de la Fuente, the European Championship-winning males’s nationwide crew coach, appeared extra involved with defending his popularity than securing justice for Hermoso. He made a number of makes an attempt to distance himself from any of the discussions about Hermoso and the way the RFEF handled the fallout from the sexual assault by Rubiales.
“If a participant got here out immediately and made an official grievance, the federation would reply,” Arantxa Uria, vp of Spain’s Affiliation for Ladies in Skilled Sport, tells The Athletic. “There’s now extra media consideration, which affords safety. We nonetheless have the doubt about whether or not — if it was not made public — how they’d act. Jennifer was at all times very alone, and stays very alone.”
In any respect worldwide tournaments, FIFA mandates that groups nominate a ‘safeguarding officer’, accountable for defending all these collaborating from hurt or abuse. For Spain on the World Cup, this was crew psychologist Javier Lopez Vallejo, who mentioned in courtroom he had no formal coaching on this space, and added that he noticed nothing in the course of the match that he ought to have been involved about. The RFEF didn’t reply when requested if any present employees had taken any of FIFA’s official safeguarding programs.
Whereas the Rubiales trial took 18 months to be investigated and tried, the regional barons who’ve lengthy dominated the federation efficiently headed off the federal government’s speak of electoral reform.
Final December, Galician regional president Louzan was elected the brand new everlasting president of the RFEF, regardless of being discovered responsible in Could 2022 of misuse of public funds throughout his former job as governor of town of Pontevedra. That call was overturned by Spain’s supreme courtroom in February, clearing him to proceed in his function on the soccer federation.
Gutierrez says the thought of a whole outsider — even perhaps a lady — coming in with a clear broom to brush up the federation was at all times unlikely.
She argues that some progress has been made. FUTPRO’s lobbying led to Spain internationals Ona Batlle and Patri Guijarro, plus two feminine referees and two coaches, turning into members of the 142-strong ‘common meeting’, which in the end controls the federation and elects its president. “That it took till (November) 2024 to have any ladies’s gamers within the meeting is loopy, however reveals the place we’re coming from,” Gutierrez says.
In January, a brand new ‘conference settlement’ was signed between the highest division of girls’s soccer in Spain (Liga F) and FUTPRO. That included a strengthening of the league’s personal sexual abuse protocol and initiatives to guard psychological well being — however the minimal wage in Spain’s prime division continues to be simply €22,500 a 12 months.
One other high-profile incident passed off in Spanish ladies’s soccer in the course of the trial. Video footage circulated on social media showing to indicate Barcelona defender Mapi Leon inappropriately touching Espanyol participant Daniela Caracas throughout a Liga F conflict.
Espanyol launched a press release expressing their “whole discontent and condemnation” of an motion that they mentioned “violated the privateness” of Caracas. Leon mentioned, “At no time did I violate, nor did I’ve the intention to violate, the privateness of my skilled colleague Daniela Caracas.”
Liga F has not made an official assertion on the incident. FUTPRO provided its assist to each gamers to “make clear what occurred and assist in any related approach”.
No official motion has but been taken, and Leon — who has not represented Spain since stepping away in protest at issues with Vilda and the RFEF in July 2022 — has continued to play for Barcelona.
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There are different methods the conference settlement doesn’t seem to have made a major distinction.
“The brand new settlement signed lately for the ladies’s gamers was promoted as an excellent step ahead,” says Uria. “However the gamers nonetheless earn the minimal wage of any Spaniard. There was no actual advance.”
Simply earlier than the trial began, the federation named a brand new director of girls’s soccer — Reyes Bellver, a lawyer who has respect amongst gamers and others throughout the recreation.
“They’re speaking about wanting to alter issues, loads,” says Uria. “We must wait and see what job (Bellver) does, what measures she will take throughout the federation construction. Simply hiring a lady for a sure function is just not sufficient. We need to see actual adjustments made, not simply good phrases.”
Louzan’s new board of 30 administrators options 15 ladies, as mandated by Spanish legislation. These embody Liga F president Beatriz Alvarez Mesa and Maria Jose Rienda, a former head of the federal government’s Superior Sports activities Council (CSD). Though Alvarez is the one feminine among the many eight vice presidents, RFEF sources — who, like all these cited on this article, requested to stay nameless to talk freely — keep the brand new regime is severe about having ladies in senior positions of energy. Different reforms on the federation since Rubiales left embody adjustments made to its authorities mandated ‘Equality Plan’, a brand new equality technique and a brand new division of equality.
“We’re going to proceed within the line of unity, consensus, laborious work and absolute transparency,” Louzan advised an meeting assembly that passed off in the course of the trial. “The second has come to do all the things that would not be completed till now. We’ve initiated a metamorphosis course of for this establishment, which must modernise and adapt to new developments.”
Spain have a good time their late winner in opposition to Belgium final week (Jose Miguel Fernandez/NurPhoto.)
These phrases have been welcomed, however everybody concerned additionally is aware of Louzan was a vp all through Rubiales’ presidency. The Galician met with the Spanish authorities on Monday and points recognized to be on the agenda included Spain’s internet hosting of the 2030 males’s World Cup. There have been only a few particular reforms carried out that straight assist the ladies’s crew.
Louzan has introduced that Liga F will obtain €2.5million from the RFEF to develop ladies’s soccer. The federation declined to specify how a lot of its €379.6million price range for 2025 would go in the direction of the ladies’s recreation, however mentioned it spent considerably extra on ladies’s soccer than it earned.
This argument is just not accepted by Gutierrez, who pointed to Zubizarreta’s function as ladies’s sporting director remaining at present vacant.
“The gamers should not asking for a similar wage as the boys, they’re asking for a similar sources — the identical installations, hours, transport, gear, employees,” she says. “That is our battle. Have we achieved that but? Clearly not. Hopefully, sometime, we can have this equality of situations, and the gamers might be free to carry out to their greatest stage.”
As Caldentey mentioned final Friday, Spain’s ladies’s crew are targeted on successful video games on the pitch. The problem stays whether or not their undoubted expertise is backed up by buildings and assist from the federation.
The phrase from the RFEF is that it is a new period, that the responsible verdict ought to enable all concerned to attract a line and transfer on. It’s not so easy.
“The responsible verdict for sexual assault appears appropriate, but it surely’s unusual there was no responsible verdict for coercion,” Paredes mentioned at a press convention from the crew camp final week. “That sums up what the dressing room feels.”
Tome mentioned final week that “every individual can have their very own ideas about one thing” when requested concerning the impact of the case on the squad. The coach’s personal testimony on the trial didn’t persuade everybody that she absolutely backed Hermoso and it stays unusual to see Spain play with out their document all-time goalscorer concerned.
“The gamers are professionals, and so they have proven (up to now) they’re able to dealing with something,” Gutierrez says. “But it surely’s true that it might be higher if these dangerous emotions didn’t exist, and that they might simply carry out to their greatest stage. The area for enchancment is so large. There’s nonetheless a protracted strategy to go.”
(High photograph: Clive Brunskill/Getty Photographs)