WOMEN'S WORLD CUP 2023
RFEF president Luis Rubiales to be suspended immediately after refusing to resign
Official complaints filed against Rubiales have already been passed onto the Spanish Administrative Sports Court, who will ban him from office.
Spain’s National Sports Council (CSD) has already submitted the complaints filed against Luis Rubiales, president of the Spanish Soccer Federation (RFEF), to the Spanish Administrative Sports Court (TSD), which means the 46-year-old will be immediately suspended from office having refused to resign at his organisation’s emergency AGM on Friday.
Rubiales had faced calls to step down after kissing Spain forward Jenni Hermoso during the celebrations of La Roja’s 2023 Women’s World Cup victory, but believes he has done nothing wrong. The TSD will then have to decide whether an offence was committed or not.
When will the suspension come into effect?
Victor Francos, the Secretary of State for Sport, has stated the complaints will be taken “extremely seriously” and that the suspension could even come into effect on Friday. “If the TAD meets at 5:00 a.m., the CSD will make a statement at 10 past”, Francos told Spanish radio station Cadena SER.
No resignation demand from the Spanish government
He also revealed that the Spanish government hadn’t demanded that Rubiales resign: “That’s not our mission. If we had done that, we wouldn’t have been acting competently in terms of the process that will begin today. There has just been some contact with his people so that they would do what they had to do”.
Francos was also asked if the CSD would have taken action against Rubiales if he had submitted his resignation: “There is a difference. If he weren’t in office, there would be no need to assess whether or not he deserved a suspension. But that’s obviously not the case”. Francos will appear before this press later on Friday to explain the process that will see the RFEF president banned from office.
Rubiales speech “completely incompatible” with position
The CSD wasted little time in reacting to Rubiales’ controversial speech, calling it “completely incompatible with the position he holds in Spanish sports and with the values of an advanced society like the one in Spain”.