CNN
—
Spanish soccer chief Luis Rubiales has refused to resign from his position as president of the Royal Spanish Football Federation (RFEF) after a week of intense criticism after a video showed him planting an unwanted kiss of a star player in Spain’s winning Women’s World Cup team.
Rubiales spoke at an RFEF Extraordinary General Assembly on Friday and said he would “fight until the end.” In a challenging speech, he described the kiss is “mutual” and spoke of “unfair” campaigns and “fake feminism.”
Rubiales was filmed forcibly kissing Spanish actress Jennifer Hermoso – who helped La Roja won her first Women’s World Cup title on Sunday in Sydney – on the lips after she collected her winners’ medal, an action the 33-year-old World Cup winner later said she “didn’t like” and “unexpected..”
On Monday, Rubiales admitted he had “made a mistake,” but criticism continued to pour in throughout the week from the soccer world and Spanish politicians, including Spain’s Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez, who told apologized for what he called “unacceptable behavior. “not enough.”
On Friday the embattled president issued a strong defense of his actions at the end, saying: “Everyone there – even some of them my family, my daughters – the desire to be there that kiss would have been the same. like kissing one of my daughters. nothing more, nothing less.
“It was a strong kiss … It was a strong, mutual, euphoric and with consent, which is the key. This is the key to all the criticism, to all the campaign raised in the country: that it is not allowed. No. This is with consent.”
On Wednesday, after strong criticism of Rubiales’ kiss from journalists, politicians, and campaign groups, Hermoso said that the Association of Professional Soccer Players (FUTPRO) in Spain and his agency TMJ “will defend my interests and act as spokespersons in this matter.”
On Thursday, global governing body FIFA said it had opened disciplinary proceedings against Rubiales because he may have breached the game’s “fundamental rules of decent behaviour”.
Rubiales also said that he was in “no position of dominance” during the kiss and he wanted to console Hermoso, who missed a penalty to put Spain ahead 2-0 during the final.
“When Jenni first appeared, she lifted me off the ground. He grabbed me by the hips, by the legs, I don’t remember well,” he said. “He lifted me off the ground – and we almost fell.
“And when he threw me on the ground, we hugged each other. He held me and pulled me to his body. We hugged and I told him, ‘Forget the penalty. You are amazing, we wouldn’t have won this World Cup without you.’ He replied to me, ‘You are amazing.’ And I said, ‘A little stroke?’ And he said, ‘OK.’
“Then the blow happened during all this celebration with him patting me on the side a few times and then excused himself with another hand on the side and laughed. That’s the whole sequence. That the whole world understood, that the whole world thought was an anecdote, and above all, he said an anecdote and nothing else.
CNN reached out to Hermoso’s representatives.
While Rubiales acknowledged that he should apologize for his actions, Rubiales described calls for his resignation as a “witch hunt.”
More to follow.