It appears that the kissing scandal won’t prompt Royal Spanish Football Federation president Luis Rubiales to resign after all.
Rubiales, who kissed Jennifer Hermoso on the lips following Spain’s victory in the Women’s World Cup final, reportedly lashed out at what he labeled a “social assassination” and said he won’t resign multiple times during the federation’s emergency general assembly Friday — calling the kiss mutual and consensual, according to multiple reports.
“My desire in that moment was exactly the same as if I’d have been kissing one of my daughters,” Rubiales said Friday, according to ESPN. “No more or less. Everybody understands that. It was a spontaneous kiss, mutual, euphoric, and consensual.
“… In the moment that Jenni arrived, she lifted me up off the ground. We almost fell over. We hugged. I said ‘Forget about the penalty, you’ve been fantastic, we wouldn’t have won the World Cup without you.’ She said: ‘You’re great.’ I said ‘A kiss?’ and she said: ‘Yes.’ … Justice isn’t being done here. This is a social assassination of me, they’re trying to kill me.”
Rubiales’ comments marked a stark pivot from ESPN’s reporting Thursday that he was expected to resign after FIFA opened “disciplinary proceedings.”
But instead, in the emergency general assembly Friday, Rubiales blasted the “false feminists” criticizing him, according to ESPN, and also apologized for grabbing his crotch during a separate incident during the awards ceremony.
The incident occurred during the awards ceremony following Spain’s 1-0 victory over England on Sunday to win the country’s first Women’s World Cup.
Rubiales embraced Hermoso, who tied for the team lead with three goals during the tournament, and then kissed her on the lips before Hermoso exited the camera frame and Rubiales continued clapping.
In the immediate aftermath of the incident, Hermoso said on a live stream that she “didn’t like it.”
Later, in a statement attributed to her despite authenticity concerns, Hermoso said it was a “natural gesture of affection and gratitude.”
Then the criticism started to mount against Rubiales.
Retiring United States women’s national team star Megan Rapinoe said the incident reflected the “deep level of misogyny and sexism” facing Spain’s women’s soccer team.
Pedro Sánchez, the country’s acting prime minister, blasted Rubiales’ apology — where he pivoted from calling his critics “idiots” to calling it a “mistake, for sure — as “not enough.”
Hermoso released another statement Wednesday — this time via her players’ union, FUTPRO — that stated her union and agency “are taking care of defending my interests and being the interlocutors on this matter.”
But after Rubiales revealed his intentions — and received applause from the audience, according to the Associated Press — Friday, his future with the federation will likely be determined by the FIFA investigation — and any separate ones that follow.
