It’s weird – you never see football bosses kiss male footballers on the lips when they win trophies, but after the Spanish women’s team’s triumph on Sunday, the president of the Spanish football federation couldn’t help himself.
Here’s the moment Luis Rubiales planted one on Jenni Hermoso at the winner’s podium:
Me dicen que este video del presidente de la federación espaÑola de fútbol, Luís Rubiales, no hay que hacerlo rular, y lo están censurando
¿Asqueroso? Es poco pic.twitter.com/A5548h6Eyj
— VIQUI ||☆|| (@viquirepublica) August 20, 2023
Several sports journalists including Nadia Tronchoni, who leads sports coverage at the newspaper El País, condemned the kiss, saying: “[It’s] an invasion of one’s personal space. Without consent. An aggression.”
Rubiales has now defended himself, telling Spanish programme El Partidazo he would ‘not pay attention to the idiots’:
“It’s a peak of two friends celebrating something. We’re not here for bulls***. Me, with everything I’ve been through, more bulls*** and more a**holes, no.
Let’s ignore it and enjoy the good stuff and don’t even tell me things about losers who can’t see [the positive].
It is a thing without evil. If there are fools, let them continue with their nonsense. There are more fools than windows. Let’s pay attention to those who are not fools. It is something without evil and nonsense.”
He further dismissed the backlash in an interview with Radio Marca, saying the following:
“The kiss with Jenni? There are idiots everywhere.
When two people have an insignificant show of affection, we cannot pay attention to idiocy. We are champions, and with that, I stay.”
In fairness to Rubiales, Hermoso had a similar sentiment when asked to comment on the situation. Although she was at first filmed on a teammate’s Instagram commenting “I didn’t like that” in the locker room. Publicly though, she stood up for the football boss and played down the incident:
“It was a totally spontaneous mutual gesture because of the immense joy that winning a World Cup brings.
The president and I have a great relationship, his behaviour with all of us has been outstanding and it was a natural gesture of affection and gratitude.
A gesture of friendship and gratitude cannot be gone over so much, we have won a World Cup and we are not going to deviate from what is important.”
So that’s that then; it was a totally harmless one-sided surprise kiss between friends! Not sure I can imagine Gareth Southgate or whoever the British equivalent to Luis Rubiales is doing the same thing, but I guess we’ll never know. Onwards and upwards!
For the world’s ‘most beautiful WAG’ according to the UK tabloids, click HERE. Never heard of her, tbh…
