Luis Rubiales, who resigned as Spain’s high soccer official after he forcibly kissed a participant, testified at his sexual assault trial on Tuesday that he did in order an indication of affection in “a scenario of extraordinary pleasure.”
Mr. Rubiales has additionally been charged with coercion in reference to the episode, by which he pressed a kiss on the participant, Jennifer Hermoso, on the sector throughout the medal ceremony after Spain gained the 2023 Girls’s World Cup.
Mr. Rubiales denied doing something flawed throughout the encounter with Ms. Hermoso. Talking in a courtroom close to Madrid, he mentioned, “You don’t win a World Cup each day,” and he added that he had kissed different gamers in celebratory moments.
He additionally mentioned that he had requested for permission earlier than kissing Ms. Hermoso, describing it as a peck. “I requested her, ‘Can I provide you with just a little kiss?’ and she or he mentioned, ‘OK,’” he informed a prosecutor. Ms. Hermoso mentioned shortly after the episode that “at no time did I consent to the kiss that he gave me.”
“I couldn’t react — it was a thousandth of a second,” she later testified, including that she had identified instantly that the act was not regular.
“My boss was kissing me,” she mentioned. “This could not occur.”
The kiss, and the following fallout, grew to become a second of reckoning within the nation in addition to within the sport, pitting a tradition of machismo in opposition to more moderen progress in gender equality in Spanish soccer.
Mr. Rubiales, 47, faces two and a half years in jail if convicted. Three different males, together with Jorge Vilda, the workforce’s coach on the World Cup, are accused of coercion, with prosecutors saying that they pressured Ms. Hermoso to drop her declare and downplay the incident. Every may face 18 months.
The trial opened final week with the testimony of Ms. Hermoso, 34, who described the kiss because the second that “ruined one of many happiest days of my life.”
Ms. Hermoso, who performs in Mexico, additionally testified that high soccer officers had pressured her to say that Mr. Rubiales had completed nothing flawed.
Ms. Hermoso was left off the Spain workforce after the episode, however on Monday the present head coach of the Spain girls’s workforce, Montse Tomé, testified that Ms. Hermoso’s exclusion “was not a punishment.”
Ms. Tomé, who grew to become the workforce’s coach in September 2023 after Mr. Vilda was fired, appeared on the court docket close to Madrid as a witness for the protection.
In August 2023, Ms. Tomé and 10 different members of the Spain girls’s teaching employees revealed a collective assertion condemning Mr. Rubiales’s “unacceptable attitudes and actions.”
Ms. Tomé’s appointment as Mr. Vilda’s successor, nevertheless, was seen by some as a continuation of the outdated management. She had labored with Mr. Vilda as his assistant and ordered gamers to attend coaching camp. She was additionally seen by gamers as providing little sensible assist for Ms. Hermoso and ignoring requires structural change within the soccer federation.
Ms. Hermoso, throughout her testimony, mentioned that the federation had all however deserted her after her complaints. She mentioned that officers wished solely “to save lots of their popularity.”
Within the rapid aftermath of the kiss, Mr. Rubiales supplied a tepid apology and resisted calls to resign. The Spanish soccer federation launched an announcement that quoted Ms. Hermoso calling the kiss “a very spontaneous mutual gesture.” Throughout her testimony, Ms. Hermoso mentioned that she had by no means authorised the assertion.
Amid mounting strain and waning assist, Mr. Rubiales resigned as head of the nationwide soccer group, the Royal Spanish Soccer Federation, in September 2023.