Admit it – you hadn’t heard of Luis Rubiales a week ago. And why would you have? The head of the Spanish FA may well have been a bit of a go-boy in his time as president but you’d have needed to be fairly deep in the weeds of sports politics to be across him. In Ireland, we’re a bit like Jack Nicholson in As Good As It Gets. Go sell crazy sports administrators someplace else – we’re all stocked up here.
Yes, much like the signatories to the Belfast Agreement who have spent the past 25 years doling out advice to warring factions around the world on how to resolve conflict, there’s bound to be a gap in the market for us to fill when it comes to this stuff. Got a bug-eyed megalomaniac in charge of your sports federation? Curious as to how it might all shake out? Come in and take a number and we’ll be right with you. We’re long past being once-bitten and we’re not in the least bit shy.
We’d have been able to predict this sort of end for Rubiales years ago. Remember when Julen Lopetegui got the heave-ho as Spain manager on the eve of the 2018 World Cup after it emerged that he had secured a job with Real Madrid after the tournament? It was Rubiales who sent him packing. Better again, Rubiales was only a month in the gig when he shot him out of a cannon.
Oh, we’d have known all right. There and then, our spidey senses would have been a-tingle. Spain hadn’t lost any of the 20 games for which Lopetegui had been in charge. Their World Cup opener against Portugal was three days away. Football is a transient business and Madrid don’t come calling every day of the week.
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Yet here was Rubiales, a chap whose playing career had ended nine years earlier with a 4-1 hiding from Rangers as a centre-back for Hamilton Academicals, this guy was raising himself to his full height and sacking the Spain manager on the grounds that he and Madrid had humiliated the team. Had anyone thought to ask us, we might not have given a view on whether Rubiales was right or wrong. But we’d have told them to keep an eye on that lad. A good close eye, now.
And lo, here we are. Five years of water under the bridge and there stands Rubiales, defiant and manly, telling the world what it can go and do with itself. The whole of Spain tuned in on Friday morning to watch him resign from his post. To get out, crotchety and begrudging but out nonetheless, after forcing a kiss on Spanish player Jenni Hermoso at the World Cup final presentation last Sunday.
Only for the whole of Spain to find out in real time the true extent of his hidden shallows.
Rubiales took the stage and talked for just short of half an hour. His one apology in that time was to the Spanish royal family for grabbing his crotch while sitting near the queen and the 16-year-old princess. But that was as far as it went in terms of sackcloth and ashes. And even then, he put it down to the heat of the moment.
He did not resign. No sir, he did not. Instead, he went the full Wolf of Wall Street on it, saying five times in a row, “I am not going to resign.” He called the kiss – a kiss the whole world has seen by now – a peck. In a new low, he shifted the blame on to Hermoso, claiming that she had grabbed his hips first and drawn him into her. He also claimed the whole thing was consensual.
So let’s break all this down. A woman who has just won the World Cup is kissed by her federation president in full view of the world. When she is asked about it, she says she did not like it, proof by itself of a lack of consent. The country for whom the woman plays then spends the ensuing week in convulsions, entirely overshadowing the greatest achievement in the history of their women's’ football team.
Politicians get involved. The story dominates the Spanish media landscape, so much so that by Friday, everyone is ready for the toerag at the centre of it to vacate the stage. It all goes so far that his successor is confirmed on several Spanish news sites even as Rubiales takes the stage. And then, right at the moment when he has guaranteed that the spotlight is brightest, he waggles his thumb on his nose and tells everyone to get lost. Maybe worst of all, the room applauds.
Now look. Rubiales surely isn’t going to be long for his odd little world. His brand of tinpot defiance might have gone gangbusters in a room full of football acolytes but Spain is a big old country and soon enough, the walls were beginning to tumble down.
By teatime in Madrid, the Spanish sports minister was announcing that they will be suspending him from his duties. A letter signed by 81 players – including all 23 members of the World Cup squad – said they would not play for the national team again until Rubiales is removed. Hermoso herself delivered the killshot. “I want to clarify, that at no time did I consent to the kiss. I don’t tolerate that my word is questioned, much less that words are invented that I haven’t said.”
So we can take it that Rubiales will be an ex-sports administrator soon enough. That’s all these people are, remember. They run sports federations. They build out the player pathways, they do the deals, they put on the games. There’s no earthly reason for most casual sports fans to know their names or to recognise them in the street. Standing in for a selfie should be more or less disqualifying.
As soon as the head of any federation starts getting notions of power and showing hints of rock stardom, that’s the time to start looking elsewhere. So many massive companies and industries across the globe are run by nameless, boring functionaries in plain spectacles and sensible shoes. Why should sport be any different?
In Ireland, we’ve learned all this the hard way. The least we can do is share our wisdom with a vulnerable world.
