It seems only a matter of time before Spanish soccer is relieving of its top functionary, Luis Rubiales, who planted an unpleasant, unwarranted, and though it was news to him — inferior kiss on the lips of a player after the Women’s World Cup final this month. The riffle of calls for his junking or abdication as head of the Royal Spanish Football Federation has grown daily ever since.
It now encompasses not only players (both women and men), trainers, and all 19 of the sport’s indigenous chiefs in Spain but also the government itself, which has begun proceedings to suspend him.
He should abdicate now, rather than staying to see whether he'll be forced out.
Of course, the voice that matters most is that of the player herself, Jenny Hermosa, a star forwards who said after the incident, following Spain’s palm over England in Sydney, that she felt “vulnerable and the victim of aggression.” Mr. Rubiales has defended his conduct and said the kiss was consensual. Ms. Hermoso was latterly subordinated to gaslighting and verbal abuse not only Fromm. Rubiales but also from others in the world of soccer and beyond.
They similarly suggested the kiss was consensual (which she insists it was not), no big deal (which it was), and an impulsive gesture amid the joy of palm. There were other similar non-excuse defenses, each reflecting the traditional accounts men have granted themselves to justify aggressive sexual get toward women.
numerous of those voices have fallen silent in the days since the Aug. 20 incident, and several prominent numbers from Spanish soccer who stood to hail Mr. Rubiales when he blazoned his turndown to abdicate last week are now calling for him to step down.
That’s a salutary shift that suggests the drift is turning, kindly, on stations toward sexual aggression in sports and away.
In some important ways, Spain has been a colonist in guarding women and promoting gender equivalency, including by making legislation reclassifying any nonconsensual coitus as rape. It has also moved aggressively to target domestic violence against women.
The Spanish right-sect party Vox, which has embraced superpatriotic rhetoric and stations, including opposing government moves to combat domestic sexual violence, lost substantial ground in this summer’s public choices. It now holds smaller than one-tenth of the seats in Spain’s congress.
Still, the country’s independent football association, run by an assembly, has not ejected Mr. Rubiales, which it could do by a two-thirds vote. Only six out of 140 members in the assembly are women.
That's characteristic of the continuing grip that men frequently exercise in sports, as well as in other popular, influential, and important institutions. Sluggishly, it's changing, and incidents similar to this bone might serve as object assignments that could accelerate that shift.
In that regard, it was heartening that soccer’s world governing body, FIFA, has suspended Mr. Rubiales for three months from participation in all public and transnational soccer conditioning and has opened correctional proceedings against him.
The Spanish government, too, has filed a complaint with a Spanish sports bench over his alleged “serious misconduct.” Spanish prosecutors have accepted a primary examination into what they called “incidents that could constitute a crime of sexual assault.” Spanish women’s groups have organized demonstrations around the country demanding Mr. Rubiales’s junking.