BarcelonaThis Friday (12 p.m., Esport3) the extraordinary general assembly of the Spanish Football Federation (RFEF) will take place in Madrid as an initial response to the requests of the Superior Sports Council for the federative body to take measures after the kiss in the disapproving mouth that Luis Rubiales made to Jenni Hermoso during the World Cup medal ceremony. Finally, it will be Rubiales himself who will announce his resignation in the assembly. A decision that comes after the kiss in Hermoso, but which has not been the only scandal that the president of the RFEF has splashed. Rubiales has starred in several controversies during his five years in office.
1) The obscene gesture of grabbing one’s testicles
After winning the World Cup, Rubiales celebrated the title in the box office with several vehement gestures that culminated by holding his testicles with his right foot. He was with Queen Letícia and Infanta Sofia, as well as many other authorities.
2) Controversial trip to New York with a Mexican painter
Delia Rodrigo, the judge from Majadahonda who is investigating the president of the RFEF for the Super Cup agreements with Saudi Arabia [i que més abaix s’expliquen], has requested information about the trip that Rubiales took in the fall of 2018 to New York with a Mexican painter, allegedly financed with funds from the RFEF. This information was revealed by the digital The confidential in May 2022, and the Federation then denied it, saying that it was an “institutional, work trip and in search of more income for the RFEF”.
3) Shameful protocol in the awarding of medals at the Women’s Super Cup
It is not the first time that the president of the RFEF has experienced a controversy linked to women’s football. After the dispute at the end of March in the final of the Spanish Super Cup between Barça and Real Sociedad, the medal ceremony for the Blaugrana (winners by 0-3) and the runners-up raised a lot of dust . No authority gave them the awards: they had to hang up the medals themselves, standing in line and taking them from a table on the stadium lawn. The scene contrasted remarkably with the same moment played by the men’s Barça a week earlier, when they were also proclaimed champions of the Super Cup, in this case, in Saudi Arabia.
4) Super Cup commissions and Piqué’s mediation
Precisely, that the men’s Super Cup is contested in Saudi Arabia also has to do with one of the other scandals of Rubiales’ mandate. The president of the RFEF agreed with Gerard Piqué – then an active player of Barça – a millionaire commission to bring the Super Cup to the Persian Gulf. The federative entity would have guaranteed the collection of 40 million euros for each edition of the tournament, while Kosmos – Piqué’s company – took home four million for each of the six exercises signed with the Saudis (in total, 24 million). Anti-corruption is investigating this deal as a suspected crime of corruption.
Several organizations and political parties called for the resignation of Rubiales, but the president of the RFEF described the reports as “lies” and “falsities”. Finally, the leader received the support of the territorial federations, to which in 2020 he provided 100,000 euros (each) to “professionalize their management”, while he remained at the head of the RFEF.
5) His uncle denounces a party with “young girls”
In September of last year, Rubiales’ uncle and former chief of staff, Juan Rubiales, reported to the Anticorruption Prosecutor’s Office that the president of the RFEF and his team organized a “party with 8 or 10 young girls” in a luxurious villa in Salobreña (Granada) and which had been paid for with money from the Federation. Four months later, Rubiales and the other managers who had stayed at Salobreña’s villa notified the judge of the case of the reimbursement of the expenses derived from that controversial celebration that the manager, in a press conference, described as a “internal work meeting”, even though it was in the middle of August. Rubiales ended up returning the money from this party that he denied.
2023-08-25 05:45:02
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