Jenni Hermoso has been recalled to the Spain squad for the first time since Luis Rubiales kissed her after the Women’s World Cup final, an incident that sparked an incredibly turbulent period of reckoning and rancour — as well as a criminal investigation.
Hermoso, 33, has been selected by Montse Tome for Spain’s Nations League fixtures against Italy on October 27 and Switzerland on October 31.
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Tome’s latest squad announcement comes as the prosecutors investigating Rubiales’ kiss — the former Spanish Football Federation (RFEF) president denies charges of sexual assault and coercion — continue to gather testimony from key witnesses, including Hermoso. The man Tome replaced as Spain manager, Jorge Vilda, is also under investigation for possible coercion, along with two other senior figures at the RFEF.
Spain’s last call-up marked the beginning of a week of late-night meetings as striking players finally returned to the national team amid suggestions they would be punished if they did not do so. The upcoming two fixtures are unlikely to be played out among such high drama, but there are still many key issues to be resolved.
Here, The Athletic explains the full picture — and what we can expect next.
Hermoso is back
The last few months have not been easy for Hermoso. Sources close to the player, who, like all sources cited here did not want to be named so as to protect their positions, say she has suffered a great deal and has been made to feel very vulnerable by the fallout over Rubiales’ kiss and the RFEF’s handling of the incident.
Last Monday, Hermoso’s testimony to prosecutors investigating whether the kiss constitutes a crime of sexual violence was leaked and broadcast on Spanish TV.
“I do not deserve to have lived through all this,” she says in the footage. “It has been very difficult to be able to leave home. I had to leave Madrid to not have that pressure. Why do I have to be crying in a room when I haven’t done anything?”
Hermoso also accuses the RFEF of leaving her “unprotected”.
“They tarnished my image, I felt that no one was protecting me,” she says. “They were asking me to protect them, to help them, but at no time did I feel that anyone was protecting me.”
Hermoso has said the kiss was not consensual but Rubiales insists that it was and has maintained that he “will continue to defend his position to tell the truth”.
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By the time Tome announced her first Spain squad on September 18, Hermoso had returned to domestic football at Mexican club Pachuca. But she was not called up. Tome said it was “to protect her”. Hermoso responded with a statement asking “from what or from whom” she required protecting.
At her squad announcement on Wednesday, Tome was extremely keen to only focus on “sporting issues”. She did not want to elaborate on what, if anything, had changed, that might help explain why Hermoso has now been selected.
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“We have spoken with her (Hermoso),” Tome said. “When the previous national team camp ended we contacted her. There was no problem. We decided not to call her up to protect her, it was a sporting decision that encompasses many things.
“The RFEF is working hard. We understood that, as the focus was on her, it was (important to be) thinking about her. She had played two games since the World Cup, with few minutes. It was a unique set of circumstances.”
What’s the mood now among Spain’s players?
When Tome was named as Vilda’s replacement in early September, most of the players were disappointed. Tome had no experience as a head coach and was Vilda’s assistant. The players felt she would not be an ally.
Sources close to the players, again consulted this week, told The Athletic the majority of the group does not want Tome to be their coach, and that with RFEF presidential elections to come in the near future, they expected she would not last long.
At her first team selection, the majority of the squad she called up had only days previously re-affirmed that they would not play for the national team until significant changes were made at the RFEF. Tome read out their names and gave the impression she had spoken to all of them, but this was not the case. They had not been informed they were going to be selected, further damaging the relationship between Tome and the players.
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The players did return, initially at least because they were worried they would face sanctions if they did not. But after a week of long meetings and two Nations League victories, they felt progress had been made. Alexia Putellas said the team’s meeting with government officials that week would be considered a “before and after” moment for women’s sport in Spain.
It did come at a cost. They were exhausted. Sources close to several of the players said the group felt that, for the first time in their long struggle for better working conditions and professional standards, things were beginning to change. But they also said they now felt a real need to disconnect from their activism and take refuge in only playing football for a while.
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It is not hard to understand why. The past year has been incredibly intense, dating back to when 15 players first removed themselves from international selection in September 2022 to protest Vilda’s management and the RFEF’s leadership, through to the World Cup with Vilda still in charge, and onto Rubiales’ kiss on Hermoso and everything that followed. They have achieved so much, and have been heralded as heroes, but the reality is it has devastated them inside.
What’s the latest in the Rubiales case?
Spanish prosecutors opened a sexual assault investigation into Rubiales on August 28 and indicated that for them to proceed further, they required Hermoso, as the injured party, to provide them with testimony within 15 days. Hermoso spoke to them eight days later.
Many have been called to testify, and the case has also expanded. Vilda was initially called as a witness but has now also been placed under investigation for possible coercion, along with Albert Luque, director of the men’s national team, and Ruben Rivera, RFEF marketing director.
Rubiales was called to testify on September 15. Like Hermoso, his testimony has also been leaked in the Spanish media.
According to statements published by El Espanol, Rubiales said of his kiss on Hermoso: “It’s not that someone has sneaked someone into an office to give them a kiss by force, no. It’s that it was something natural, in front of millions of eyes, between two people who have been living together for a long time.
“How am I going to apologise if we were both super happy?”
In her testimony, Hermoso says: “I greet the queen, I hug the daughter and the next one was Rubiales. I hug him and the first thing I say to him when I hug him is, ‘What a mess we’ve made’, and he jumps on me and I stand firm. When he comes down the only thing I remember is that he said to me, ‘We won this World Cup thanks to you’. The next thing I remember is his hands on my head and the kiss on the mouth.”
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The day after the leaked video footage appeared on Spanish TV last week, Hermoso’s legal representatives sent a letter to the investigating judge in charge of the case requesting that “the privacy of the victim be guaranteed and that the testimonies and evidence be safeguarded appropriately”.
On September 25, Rafael Hermoso, the player’s brother, came to testify as a witness. He had been on the plane with the squad travelling back after the World Cup final. This week, his testimony was leaked in the Spanish media too. Prosecutors asked him whether the RFEF had tried to pressure his sister into helping relieve public pressure on Rubiales over the kiss.
Again according to statements published by El Espanol, Rafael Hermoso said that Vilda approached him on the plane and said: “The president (Rubiales) sent me to talk to you so that you can convince your sister that before arriving in Doha (where there was a stopover) she should come out with him and make a statement.”
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According to further media reports in Spain, Vilda denied this when he was questioned on the subject himself during his appearance before prosecutors on October 10.
So far, three of Jenni Hermoso’s team-mates have testified, and many more important figures from Spanish football are also due to appear over the next month, including the manager of Spain’s men’s team, Luis de la Fuente. The appearance of RFEF director of football Luque, who played for Newcastle from 2005-2007, has been delayed twice.
Earlier in October, an exchange of WhatsApp messages from Luque to a friend of Hermoso was published in El Mundo, with the RFEF figure reportedly saying of her: “She doesn’t deserve anything because of her human baseness.”
Hermoso is due to give further testimony, though no date has been set.
Also due to appear are:
- Patricia Perez, former RFEF head of media for the women’s national team
- Miguel Garcia Caba, who was sacked as RFEF director of integrity in September
- Pablo Garcia Cuervo, who was sacked as RFEF director of communication in September
- Enrique Yunta, deputy director of communication at RFEF
- Javier Lopez Vallejo, psychologist of the women’s national team
- Jose Maria Timon, Rubiales’ former chief of staff
- Javier Puyol, head of compliance at RFEF
- Rafael del Amo, president of the RFEF’s national women’s football committee
- Laia Codina, Spain and Arsenal centre-back
What action has the RFEF taken?
Back in September, when Spain’s players reported for national team duty for the first time since winning the World Cup, Victor Francos, president of the Consejo Superior de Deportes (CSD — a governmental body with authority in sporting matters), travelled to meet the squad.
Afterwards, he said progress had been made during “friendly and constructive” talks between the RFEF, CSD, players and Tome. He said the outcome of these talks included a new commission formed by representatives of all parties that will “monitor the agreements we have reached”.
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In a recent interview with The Athletic, Francos said further details of those agreements would become known in the coming days.
By the time of that meeting at the Spain camp in September, Vilda had already been sacked as manager. His dismissal was described in an RFEF statement as “one of the first renewal measures announced by the president, Pedro Rocha”.
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Shortly after the meeting, Andreu Camps was fired as RFEF general secretary and Garcia was removed from his post as director of integrity. A week later, director of communications Cuervo was also dismissed.
Who might be the next RFEF president? And what’s next for Rubiales?
Rocha is serving as RFEF president, having assumed the role after Rubiales’ provisional 90-day suspension by FIFA, which was issued on August 26. FIFA has said its disciplinary committee “will only provide further information on these disciplinary proceedings once it has issued a final decision on the matter”.
The RFEF would like to hold new elections in the first quarter of 2024. However, a recent complaint filed by long-time RFEF critic Miguel Angel Galan represents a potential challenge to that plan, and could see elections held much sooner.
As for Rubiales, he remains suspended from all footballing activities as a result of his FIFA ban. He formally resigned as RFEF president on September 10, bringing an end to a dramatic few weeks during which he refused to do so despite mounting international pressure.
Spain’s Administrative Sports Court (TAD) also opened its own investigation into Rubiales, but said that it considered Rubiales’ actions to be of a “serious” nature, as opposed to being “very serious”. Under a “serious” case, the maximum punishment is a two-year ban, whereas a “very serious” investigation carries a punishment of up to five years.
Full Spain squad:
Goalkeepers: Misa Rodriguez, Cata Coll, Enith Salon
Defenders: Ona Batlle, Oihane Hernandez, Irene Paredes, Ivana Andres, Laia Aleixandri, Maria Mendez, Olga Carmona
Midfielders: Tere Abelleira, Jenni Hermoso, Maite Oroz, Aitana Bonmati, Alexia Putellas, Anna Torroda
Forwards: Salma Paralluelo, Mariona Caldentey, Inma Gabarro, Amaiur Sarriegi, Athenea del Castillo, Esther Gonzalez, Lucia Garcia
(Top photo: Marc Atkins/Getty Images)