Winning the World Cup has put an international spotlight on the Spanish national women’s team and, alongside Luis Rubiales, Jorge Vilda’s true self has come to light. During Rubiales’ now infamous assembly speech, the president of the Spanish football federation (RFEF) offered the Spain manager a new four-year contract on €500,000 a year, not more and no less to prove a point. While 11 members of the coaching staff of the national team released a joint statement in support of Jennifer Hermoso, Vilda was not part of it. He made his stance clear in support of the RFEF president and not the players who won him a World Cup.
Now, 16 days after the triumph in Sydney, Vilda is gone, sacked by the RFEF after the fallout from Rubiales kissing Hermoso on the lips at the prize ceremony. He will be missed by hardly anyone.
In 2022, Spain crashed out the Euros at the quarter-final stage against the eventual champions, England, a third consecutive major tournament under Vilda where Spain had not been able to reach at least a semi-final. Despite this, Vilda never felt pressured by results like most other managers. One week before the Euros kicked off, he was offered and signed a new contract to stay on as manager of the national team until 2024. Whether Vilda was winning or losing, he always got a new contract from Rubiales.
The last major trophy that Vilda had secured was the European Under-17 Championship title in 2011, but winning the World Cup cemented the idea within the RFEF, and sparked the confidence for Rubiales to offer Vilda a new contract knowing he had the argument of “why wouldn’t you keep a World Cup winning manager?”
Maybe one reason would be that last year, after the 2022 Euros, 15 Spain Women players – with the support of Alexia Putellas, Irene Paredes and Hermoso – protested against the RFEF because of the poor professional standards held by it and said they would not play for Spain again unless changes were made. Though it was not a direct call for Vilda to be dismissed, the lack of an elite standard in the national team falls under the responsibility of the manager, his staff and the sporting director; which in this case is Vilda as well.
Aside from being unable to keep up a high standard of football, Vilda has been notably poor at managing players. He refused to include Barcelona’s first-choice goalkeeper, Sandra Paños, in the World Cup squad despite her winning the league and the Champions League. He instead called up Cata Coll, Paños’s understudy, who came back from an anterior cruciate ligament injury in March 2023 and started only two league matches with Barcelona last season.
Real Madrid’s Misa Rodríguez headed into the World Cup as Spain’s first-choice goalkeeper but at the beginning of the knockout stage, Coll was suddenly starting in goal. A goalkeeper switch in the middle of a major tournament is almost unheard of. Was it a clash of ideas with Vilda that cost Rodríguez her starting position? When the Spain captain, Ivana Andrés, picked up an injury in the group stage, Rodríguez was one of the options to wear the armband. But as reported by Relevo, she insisted there were better suited players such as Putellas and Paredes, who were Spain captains before the “15” statement.
Spain could have had another world-class player in Australia and New Zealand but Damaris Egurrola, the Lyon midfielder, decided to switch national teams, with Vilda it seems being at the centre of her reasons. She had the option to represent Spain, the Netherlands or the USA and in March 2022 opted for the Oranje Leeuwinnen. Egurrola made only one appearance in more than two years for Spain after making her debut in 2019. She’s now a regular starter for Lyon, eight times the European champions, and has represented the Netherlands at a Euros and a World Cup.
“My relationship with Vilda? There wasn’t one,” she said in an interview with the Basque TV channel EITB. Vilda and Egurrola worked with each other in the Spain youth teams, they knew each other well, and she knew him well enough to leave. “I’m proud of the decision I took to play for another national team and be happy,” she added.
What the 15 players referred to – the level of training, professionalism and standard of the national team – were Vilda’s responsibilities as both the manager and sporting director. Players would go to the national team and play every minute of games, even in friendlies, when the manager could have rested players – particularly those from Barcelona who were often involved in the league, the Champions League and the Copa de la Reina. There was a sense from the players that there was a lack of protection.
In the statement released by the players they clarified: “We do not wish to be called up to the national team until situations are fixed where our emotional state, personal state and performance are affected, and, in consequence, because of the national team, we finish with undesirable injuries.”
It is no coincidence that the national team’s success has come parallel with that of Barcelona. The Catalan club reached their first Women’s Champions League final in 2019 and since then they have reached three more finals and won two. In Spain’s World Cup final starting XI, there were six current Barcelona players and one former Barça player. With Putellas coming on late in the match, eight of the 14 Spanish players who featured in the World Cup final were Barcelona players. And that is without players such as Mapi León, Paños and Patri Guijarro, who stayed at home as a consequence of their protest. The three of them started every single match in Spain’s Euro 2022 campaign.
“It’s one thing if we’ve only been demanding this [higher standards for the national team] for a week, but when it’s been years … I don’t want to compare but I’m at Barcelona and I’m very happy with the level there,” León said in an interview with Mundo Deportivo in March.
Barcelona’s European and domestic success has also sparked Real Madrid into action and they have invested heavily in their women’s team, especially after a gruesome 5-2 defeat in the Champions League against their bitter rivals at the Camp Nou in 2022. There were two Real players in the World Cup final starting XI, with two more coming on in the second half. In total, of the 14 Spain players who part took in the World Cup final, only one player was neither a Barcelona nor Madrid player past or present: Alba Redondo of Levante.
Spain are the holders of the senior, under-20 and under-17 World Cups, talent is thriving despite the lack of resources given to them by their federation and despite Vilda. As the former Spain captain Veró Boquete told the Guardian recently: “All those talents that are being formed at clubs in Spain are at an elite level, independently of who is the manager of the national team.”
It all adds to the feeling that Spain won the World Cup despite Jorge Vilda and not because of him, and that is a damning verdict on the man who has been in charge since 2015.
The future is clearly bright for Spanish women’s football and at last the players may actually get the support they deserve.
