2023-08-21 19:49:54
BarcelonaLuisillo, as he was known in Motril, used to kick the ball in front of the town hall of this town in Granada. He did it proudly, as he waited for his father to leave the building: he was the mayor. Luis Rubiales, born in 1977 in Gran Canaria, where his father spent a period working, always mentally returns to Motril. It is his land, it is his roots, where he began to show himself to be a person of character. Determined to be a footballer, when he was offered to return home to play for the village team, he refused, as he no longer wanted to be the mayor’s son. I wanted to fly high all by myself.
Rubiales has gone from being a willing player, one of those who became professionals by putting in many hours because they were nothing from the other world either, to preside over the Royal Spanish Football Federation (RFEF) with a controversial style. Jenni Hermoso’s unconsented kiss was the latest case in a long list. His way of managing the crisis born when almost all the players of the women’s team asked for changes, highlighted his leadership style, not a friend to asking for forgiveness and admitting mistakes. In Sydney, when Spain won the World Cup, Rubiales was seen making grotesque gestures, such as when he grabbed his testicles, before kissing Hermoso. It took 24 hours to apologize.
If he didn’t attract attention while playing, once he got a position he didn’t stop causing noise. A style that has moved far away from the memory left by his father, who when he was young organized strikes in full Francoism, before becoming a socialist mayor with the support of Esquerra Unida. They say that he built a town hall without money, winning the love of the neighbors. However, he lost the support of IU when he opted for a land requalification plan that brought him closer to powerful entrepreneurs in the province of Granada. In a report in the local press, former councilor colleagues of the father claim that they detect things of the father in the son.
Rubiales became president of the RFEF five years ago, after obtaining 80 votes in an election in which he defeated Juan Luis Larrea. It was an election in which three decades of power were put to an end by the Basque Ángel Maria Villar, who governed the RFEF alternating between successes and scandals. In fact, he fell when the details of what became known as the Soule case became known, when he and his son were arrested for corruption. The fall of the former Athletic Bilbao player opened a power struggle in which Rubiales, who was then the president of the Spanish Football Association (AFE), emerged victorious.
Rubiales had started playing for Motril before leaving for Valencia’s base football, where he did not succeed. He always likes to explain that when he was little, his sister accidentally fell on him and broke both of his legs, which led doctors to say that Luisito would not be able to be a footballer when he grew up. “When I want something, I get it,” he likes to remember. And, in fact, he went on to become a professional and play for clubs such as Guadix, one of Motril’s rivals, where he wanted to go so as not to remain the mayor’s son at home; Majorca; Lleida; the Xerez, or the Levant, where he would live his most stable stage and earn the nickname of Pundonor for his way of playing.
Rubiales, who began his career as a striker until a serious injury recycled him into defence, lived through the dark side of football in Alicante and Levante, where he suffered defaults. Graduated in law, he decided to take advantage of this bad experience to fight for the rights of footballers and was elected president of the AFE. As president of this body, Rubiales led the fifth strike in the history of Spanish football as a result of non-payment by the League worth 50 million euros. At that time he got the support of the best players of the time, at the start of the League in the 2011/12 season. Thus he weaved a network of contacts that allowed him to be in an ideal situation when Villar fell.
The 2018 World Cup, with Lopetegui’s ‘surpass’
Once he was elected president of the RFEF, just months before the 2018 World Cup in Russia, he wanted to make it clear what kind of president he is when he sacked the coach, Julen Lopetegui, when it became known that he was negotiating with Real Madrid . A few days before the debut in Russia, he changed his coach. Spain, of course, did badly. But people began to understand that Rubiales would be an attention-grabbing president. His management of the position of national coach, in fact, demonstrates this, by not avoiding the confrontation between Luis Enrique and his assistant, Robert Moreno, when the latter assumed the position a few months after the former had lost his daughter to illness
Rubiales, beneficiary of a large salary as president of the RFEF, has always defended that he will manage to generate profits and new resources for state football, which has led him to live an open war with the president of the League, Javier Tebas , with whom he sometimes throws dishes over the head on social networks. In his quest to find money, Rubiales would raise a lot of dust when he agreed with then Barça player Gerard Piqué’s company, Kosmos, to bring the Spanish Super Cup to Saudi Arabia, a case that ended up in court.
Asked then if it was inconsistent to defend human rights and play in a country with a dictatorship, he said that thanks to Spanish football, “certain freedom for Saudi women” would come. “We have a moral obligation to go there,” he said. With this business, the Federation went on to win 40 million euros per edition of the tournament, which was paid by Sela, a Saudi public company. Of this money, the majority was distributed between the clubs that disputed it and a part, 10%, was kept by the company Kosmos as a commission.
Rubiales had to come out to defend himself when the audios of the conversations with Pique talking about the Super Cup in Saudi lands were leaked. He did it in a clear demonstration of his style: instead of keeping a low profile, he went on the attack, leaving for posterity a reflection in which he claimed there was a witch hunt against him. “What’s the next thing they’re going to do to me? I’m afraid they’re going to put cocaine in the trunk of my car,” he went as far as to say. “To be in my position at the head of the RFEF, you cannot lack courage. I knew that I would be attacked by very powerful people, but not that they would take information from my phone. It is a mafia,” he added. David Aganzo, the president of the AFE, Rubiales’ previous position, would claim that it is just the opposite and that the one who crosses the line of morality is the president of the RFEF, whom he has accused of tapping his phone.
With the votes renewed until 2024 after he was the sole candidate for the presidency in 2020, Rubiales says he has not had “a single quiet week” since he became president. The list of cases where he has been involved is, in fact, long. He himself has claimed to have 25 lawsuits, as “they want to finish me off”. One of the most famous cases was when in 2020 the former chief of staff of the RFEF denounced that he had organized a party in a villa in a town in Granada, Salobreña, where he would have invited many young women paying money with Federation cards . The former chief of staff, by the way, is Juan Rubiales, his uncle. A few years ago the architect Yasmina Eid-Macheh accused him of having tried to pay in 2015 for some works on a private estate with funds from the AFE, a case that would end in court with a victory for Rubiales’ legal team.
Until the Women’s World Cup, his last scandal had been with Osasuna, when the Navarrese club accused him of not defending them in their exclusion from European competitions, a case that the Pamplona club would end up winning. His relationship with many clubs is not very good. In 2022, The confidential posted a WhatsApp conversation in which Rubiales referred to various Spanish teams derogatorily and said he disliked Villarreal, Sevilla and Valencia “badly”.
Should Luis Rubiales resign for kissing Jenni Hermoso?
#son #mayor #jumps #fire #fire #Spanish #football