Rubiales, the kiss and football’s #MeToo moment
The Athletic FC Podcast
The Athletic
4.0 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 30 August 2023
⏱️ 34 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Spain won their first Women's World Cup last week, but the fallout has instead been dominated by one man; president of the Spanish Football Federation Luis Rubiales.
Rubiales planted a kiss on Spanish player Jennifer Hermoso's lips during the medal ceremony, a kiss she said was non-consensual. Since then, Rubiales has been suspended but ignored calls to step down as Spanish football descends into chaos... even leading to his own mother going on hunger strike over accusations against him earlier this week.
To discuss a fast moving story and what it says for women in sport, The Athletic's Laura Williamson, Laia Cervello and Adam Crafton joined host Ayo Akinwolere.
Produced by Adonis Pratsides
Additional Production by: Abi Paterson, Guy Clarke, Mike Stavrou and Jay Beale
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The Athletic. |
| 0:04.6 | It's been 10 days since Spain's women's team won their first ever World Cup. |
| 0:10.4 | But no sooner than Jenny Harmoso and her teammates were crowned champions, the spotlight shifted, as it always does in the women's game, away from the football itself to something else. |
| 0:29.6 | What followed was a he-said-she-said scandal involving falsified quotes, a hunger strike and the coming together of an entire footballing community to say, |
| 0:39.5 | Say Akabo, it's over. |
| 0:43.8 | As the suspended president, Luis Rubiales clings to power, let's talk about how we got here, what |
| 0:50.2 | allyship really means in the men's game and the real legacy of a wonderful tournament. |
| 0:56.3 | I'm Ayo Akim Walere. |
| 0:57.8 | Welcome to the Athletic Football Podcast. |
| 1:08.0 | For this, we've got the Athletics Deputy Editor Laura Williamson, reporter Adam Crafton, and Leia Serbelo Herrero, who's been all over this story from the start. |
| 1:18.0 | Leia, let's get a sense of the timeline here, because this story has just got bigger, more bizarre, more crazy. |
| 1:25.9 | You were at the stadium in Australia, as Spain were crowned world champions. |
| 1:32.2 | But then everything changed so quickly. |
| 1:36.4 | Yeah, I mean, when we were there, none of the journalists covering Spain could believe that they have achieved it because to us they were |
| 1:45.2 | unfavorants because of everything that happened in the last year. So everybody was so excited. |
| 1:51.1 | But at the same time, we were talking about, yeah, but it's also Billas and Ruehales World Cup. |
| 1:56.4 | It was a shame that that kind of federation that has just shown in the last 34 years to |
| 2:02.4 | care nothing about women's football will be reinforced after that. |
| 2:06.7 | So mixed feelings and just saying, yeah, we give up, they are going to just gain force |
| 2:13.9 | after that. |
| 2:14.9 | And then when nobody was expecting it, they just made their own grave. |
| 2:19.3 | They were so obsessed with giving a good image of the Federation during a month and a half |
... |
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