The soccer world championship achieved this Sunday in Australia by the women’s team was much more than a victory on the pitch. The Spanish players buried with their display of pride decades of contempt for athletes. In schools, in families, in neighborhood fields and in sports establishments such as the Royal Spanish Football Federation (RFEF) itself, they have had to spend many years, first of having to keep quiet, and then of loudly demanding, until you reach the Sydney landmark. The world of football has taken this process to a new dimension, and the RFEF has supported the women’s team in this competition With resources that I had never counted on. But you must also self-critically assume that has come to this point by dragging his feetwhen in other sports (tennis, athletics…) the normalization of the female presence was years ahead of him.
This day that should have been only a celebration has been clouded by the behavior of the president of the RFEF during the victory celebration. His desire for prominence after the victory over Australia and his forced kiss to one of the players, which violates the codes against sexist harassment of the entity he presides over, were nothing more than a abusive attitude of someone in a position of power with respect to his subordinates. Exhibiting a lack of composure on the part of those who held an institutional representation. With the insistence of highlighting the role of Jorge Vilda or with the gesture of holding his testicles looking at the field from the box, seemed at times more like a celebration, declined in the masculine, of the victory of the high officials of the federation with respect to the players who dared to raise their voices than a recognition of the champions.
That the attitude of the president of the Spanish Football Federation has been object of widespread criticism and reproach from the Spanish Government itself, to the point that he has seen the need (“there is no other way”, he said when saying that “surely” he should do it) to apologize hours later, it is a second triumph, beyond sports. He shows that things are changing, and for the better, in sport and in Spanish society. But Rubiales’ excuses have been insufficient and hesitant. He should certainly assume his own mistake and not just apologize to “people who have felt hurt.” His grudging rectification, moreover, only came after a first hot reply that was as insulting towards those who criticized him as it was his embarrassing attitude in Sydney. And from areas of sports journalism that represent more the past than the future yet has been apologized or cheered. A sum of reasons to understand how far there is still to go.
The president of the Federation has come to the conclusion that he prefers us to stay with the sporting feat of the women’s team than with this controversy. Yes, we can keep something positive from what happened: after the public, national and international embarrassment, in the future neither the current president of the RFEF, nor whoever may succeed him, given that he still finds it difficult to accept the inappropriateness of his behavior, will be able to return to acting thinking, as Rubiales apparently continues to believe, that a scene like the one experienced in Sydney is something “natural” and “normal”.