Spain’s football association chief Luis Rubiales ruled out resigning in connection with his sexual assault on football player Jennifer Hermoso on Friday (08/25/2023). And that’s not all: after the scandal surrounding the forced kiss on the lips when honoring the world champions and the subsequent outrage around the world, the association escalated the conflict further – after the entire women’s team went on strike.
The association is now threatening Hermoso in particular with a lawsuit, accusing her of lying. Rubiales, who has now been suspended by FIFA for the first time for 90 days, presented himself in a public speech at an extraordinary RFEF general assembly as the supposedly true victim of “false feminism” – and was applauded by a largely male audience in the hall .
Men have ‘shaped football for years’
In the Deutschlandfunk interview, Sandra Schwedler, chairwoman of the supervisory board of the second division football club FC St. Pauli, did not want to talk about a general “male problem” in football.
However, Schwedler, who is the only woman in German professional football in her position, emphasized: “But what I notice is that men have of course shaped this sport for years and have thus specified how something that is considered ‘normal’ should be. titled and thus excluded or kept small a large part of society, namely everything that is not male.”
One of these men who shaped football in Germany for years is Karl-Heinz Rummenigge. The 67-year-old, who is now back at Bayern Munich as a member of the supervisory board, jumped to Rubiales’ side after the sexual assault.
He had said on the sidelines of the “Sport Bild” award: “When you become world champion, you are emotional. And what he did there is – sorry, with all due respect – absolutely okay.” When he won the Champions League back then, “I kissed men – not on the mouth, but out of joy.”
Rummenigge’s statement described Schwedler in the Dlf interview as indicative of “how dramatic the situation actually is. Not having the ability to reflect at this point.”
The chairman of the supervisory board of FC St. Pauli found Rummenigge’s comparison “devastating because Karl-Heinz Rummenigge is not at all aware of this power, this demonstration of power and these power structures in football.”
Schwedler criticizes “purely male alliances”
Meanwhile, some women’s clubs like Nuremberg and Werder Bremen showed solidarity with Hermoso, as did the German internationals Lina Magull and Laura Freigang.
With the exception of the Spanish footballer Borja Iglesias (Betis Sevilla), who joined the strike by the Spanish national team and announced that he would no longer play for the men’s national team for the time being, there is more restraint in the men’s football world in relation to the cause before.
Schwedler would like “more solidarity” from men in particular: “Men benefit more from the system, so more men are needed to say: ‘I’m benefiting from this system right now. I have to support something there.'”
She generally misses a greater “awareness” of power structures in football: “That’s just not even bad intentions on the part of many, it’s just not learned, because it’s always normal that it’s always just about the men.” Football “worked that way for years” because “purely male alliances protected each other”.
Associations have a duty to “initiate things”
In order to break up these rigid structures, “a top-down” as well as a “bottom-up” movement is needed, explained Schwedler. On the one hand, the “associations like the DFL or the DFB” are called upon to “go into it much more and initiate certain things”. On the other hand, “more role models” in the clubs would have to be raised on the boards.
Schwedler also prompted a fundamental thought: “Perhaps we first have to think about how football should actually be structured in 2023.” She can imagine, for example, that sexism will also be a topic in youth academies as part of the training of players.