The way Luis Rubiales told the story, it was a warning. Designed to illustrate how determined he is, who he is. He revealed that when he was barely a month old his sister broke his legs. She fell on top of him, causing six or seven fractures on each side, and the doctor told his parents that their son could be anything except a footballer. But that was exactly what he had become and now he was the president of the Spanish football federation so, no, he wasn’t going to be beaten this easily. “I’m a fighter,” he said.
It was April last year and Rubiales was giving a press conference following the publication of a series of voice notes between him and Gerard Piqué, still playing for Barcelona at the time, which showed how they had taken the Spanish Super Cup to Saudi Arabia – the Supercopa of equality, Rubiales called it. The back and forth between “Geri” and “Rubi”, taken from the president’s phone and leaked, saw the pressure build and the circle tighten, but he wasn’t going to back down, however hard they tried to get him, and he claimed they would stop at nothing.
“I’m a normal guy, 44 years old, from Motril,” Rubiales said, during the appearance which did indeed reveal something of who he is, if not always the way he intended. “I don’t drink alcohol, I don’t smoke. I don’t think we’ll reach the point when they find me in a ditch, shot in the back of the head, but if they have done this with my mobile, why wouldn’t they put things on it? I can’t guarantee that tomorrow they won’t find a bag of cocaine [planted] in the boot of my car.” In the end, it wasn’t the cocaine; it was the World Cup. It was the kiss. He pulled this trigger himself.
Just because he is paranoid doesn’t mean that they aren’t out to get him – “We have to remove Rubiales,” La Liga’s president, Javier Tebas, says in another recording that was leaked as the war between the two institutions raged. But succeeding was a different question. In October that year, another series of messages published by El Confidencial, this time between Rubiales and his dad, showed the federation president calling Atlético Patético and expressing his dislike for Sevilla, Valencia and Villarreal.
Mostly it was inconsequential, although the judge that allowed their publication said they raised questions about Rubiales’ impartiality – prompting one columnist to note that there were a million better reasons for him to have been toppled. A million, perhaps not, but in an interview with El País, Rubiales said thathe had faced 70 or 80 legal cases brought against him. Those were the work of a couple of enemies, he said, and anyway, he had won them all so far.
There were successes, income increasing and budgets expanding, including for women’s football, yet also instability. There was the near-collapse of Spain’s men’s third tier, and the endless, tawdry, damaging conflict with the league – even if he insisted it was not a conflict but an attack.
The accusations accumulated and Rubiales addressed them all in his own way. Head on, chest out. “I usually wear a cap but these days I am taking it off and walking down the street so everyone can see me,” he said, in part because he could. A man who engendered and demanded loyalty, he had support from many inside the clientelist structure of the federation and acquiescence from others, even as he saw potential enemies in many and Tebas’s hidden hand almost every time he was challenged. None of those cases, none of the outcry, none of those who opposed him could push him over the edge.
Until now. That unsolicited kiss and Rubiales’s horrendous handling of it became the catalyst for change, achieving something that other people and other moments did not. “I won’t resign,” he had shouted five times in that now infamous appearance at the assembly in which he addressed his daughters, sitting exposed in the front row, as he railed against “false feminism”. But 17 days later, having long since been suspended by Fifa, he finally did.
“It’s over,” read the hashtag that accompanied the statement from 81 female players, including all 23 who had won the World Cup, and now it is. Se acabó. His presidency is anyway, and that is a start; a meaningful shift will require more change. It could have happened sooner. These have been damaging, if ultimately cathartic days, sometimes bordering on the surreal. The kiss started something, a process which brought further detail, more accusations, a different view of the president, more of him coming to light. Tamara Ramos, a former employee, accused Rubiales of asking her what colour underwear she was wearing.
His uncle Juan Rubiales, formerly his right-hand man at the federation but currently out of favour and locked in a legal battle over his ostracism there, now described him as a man with a tendency towards sexism, left behind by society.
Above all, the days since Sydney brought more actions, more words, from Rubiales: he did more than anyone to change that portrait of him, becoming almost a caricature. Every time he spoke, it got worse. There was the original apology which was not much of an apology, the statement from Hermoso that wasn’t from her at all and the federation’s attempt to get Fifa to stand up to the Spanish government, even at the risk of Spanish clubs being kicked out of Europe. Even that speech to the assembly was not the last of it. When he went in everyone expected a resignation; instead, there was Rubiales, distilled.
Much of what happened before has been revisited and reevaluated now, the demands from 15 players put in context, their position vindicated. Rubiales’ defence of the head coach, Jorge Vilda, sacked last week, has too. The kiss became part of something broader, a cause. Politics and society spoke not just football, which is never just football. “The feminist country advances ever quicker,” wrote minister Yolanda Díaz on Monday morning, after Rubiales’ resignation was finally confirmed. “The transformation and improvement of our lives is inevitable. We’re with you Jenni.”
There is something in Rubiales saying there are powers against and an irony in how “his” political party moved against him, how he has ended up courting a constituency on the other side of the culture war, far closer to the political predilections of his great rival. There’s something somehow fitting about his resignation at last coming via a Google doc attached to a tweet, email accidentally revealed, and an interview with Piers Morgan.
In the end, it was inevitable, a matter of time, and yet it took its time. None of those things forced his hand, even as they built up,leaving him ever more isolated. Not the Fifa suspension. Not those who might support him seeing that they could not do so any more, at least not publicly. Not the regional presidents urging him to go. Not the case taken to the court of sporting administration, in an attempt to give the government to the right to remove him. Not his mother locking herself in a church in Motril and going on a hunger strike; not even his mother being taken out of there and to hospital.
Rubiales told Morgan about the pressure on his family but his statement reveals the real reason: the risk to Spain’s World Cup bid. The fighter couldn’t keep fighting; the damage, bad enough already, would be even greater, and not just in Spain. Aware that he was never going to be able to go back, even he was forced to accept that in the end, to let go, losing a total salary of almost €900,000. “Insisting on staying won’t contribute anything positive,” he conceded. “My departure will contribute to Europe and Africa remaining united for the 2030 World Cup.” And so the circle closes.
The grandson of a player, the son of a teacher and a hairdresser, the divorced father of three, Rubiales’ own dad was the PSOE mayor of Motril. He qualified as a lawyer but despite the broken legs he did become a footballer. Not a brilliant one, but determined. In his words, a warrior and certainly a leader.
When he was captain at Levante, he led the players on a strike, a bullish presence and a successful one too. After a year without getting paid, they finally received three-quarters of the money they were owed. He was at Hamilton Academical, still only 32, when he retired and returned to Spain to run for the presidency of the players’ union, the AFE. That was what ultimately led him to the RFEF. A left-back, he had made 298 professional appearances, played for six clubs, scored a single goal and never got near the competition with which his presidency opened and with which it has now closed. It all started with a World Cup, the man who was less than a month into his presidency sacking Julen Lopetegui two days before Russia 2018, bulldozing through on misplaced pride and leaving any hope that team had in tatters. It all ended with one, too. Despite everything, from an unwanted coach to 12 absent players, years of distrust and discomfort, an atmosphere of deep pessimism, Spain were champions this time.
As it turned out, it was the success that eventually caught him. His position could have been stronger than ever, and that realisation continued to weaken him again. All he had to do was, well, nothing. But not only had his team won; so, he was sure, had he and Rubiales is Rubiales, the elation exposing him. He was as good as gone, almost as quickly as Lopetegui had been.
On some level, those moments, start and end, were not so different: the way both crises had unfolded, how he handled them, showed the president as he is. Which is why he ended up having to go and why he wouldn’t actually go, Rubiales refusing to depart until the pressure from another World Cup became too great even for him. Insist on continuing, he was told, and 2030, his legacy, his project, would be as dead as he already was.
