Former Spanish FA president Luis Rubiales has accused Jenni Hermoso of lying about the kiss he gave her after the Women’s World Cup final.
Rubiales has insisted to Spain’s National Court that the Spanish striker gave him consent to kiss her during the medal ceremony. The 46-year-old sparked controversy when he kissed Hermoso on the lips following Spain’s 2-1 defeat of England in the World Cup final on August 20. Hermoso claimed that the kiss was non-consensual, and Rubiales resigned from his position three weeks after the incident.
“She knows perfectly well that she is being untrue,” Rubiales told prosecutors, as reported by El Espanol.
“At the medal ceremony, I was hugging the players, the coach, when she passed by. She comes to me to give me a hug. We hug, she lifts me up and I make a gesture so as not to fall, all this with a conversation in which I remind her – because she had missed a penalty – to cheer her up a little, that without her we couldn’t have won the World Cup.
“She tells me I’m a crack [an endearing slang term in Spanish], thank you very much. And then I ask her, ‘can I give you a little kiss, a little peck?’ And she tells me that it’s okay.”
Prosecutors asked Rubiales why he grabbed Hermoso around the head if she had given her consent to be kissed.
“Well, out of joy,” he replied. “She grabs me wherever she can, I grab her too and that’s it. Two or three minutes later they all grabbed me and pulled me up, swinging me.
“And at that moment I’m not going to say that they shouldn’t touch me, excuse me, my butt, my knees or my shoulder. We have won a World Cup and the tremendous euphoria and joy there is indescribable.
“It happened that way because when you win the lottery or a war ends, the war in Ukraine ends or you win a World Cup, well, that effusiveness, that spontaneity…”
Rubiales also claimed that he and Hermoso had a brief conversation about the potential backlash to the kiss.
“Hey, Jenni, why don’t we both go out? Let’s end this, because this is going to hurt me a lot,” Rubiales claimed to have said.
Rubiales said that Hermoso replied: “No, look, President Rubi, I’ll pass, I want to enjoy the World Cup, I’m not going to make any more statements.”
According to El Confidencial, Rubiales pressured an RFEF employee to testify that Hermoso gave her consent to the kiss. Rubiales is banned from contacting Hermoso and from being within 200 metres of her.
After the World Cup many Spanish players signed a statement stating their intention to boycott playing for the national team until significant structural changes had been made.
Their stance did not initially change after Rubiales’ resignation, but many reported for duty at the end of September for fear of the legal repercussions of not doing so.
