The soccer player of the Spanish team Jenni Hermoso, world champion in Australia and New Zealand, to whom the former president of the Spanish Football Federation (RFEF) gave a kiss in full joy of winning the title, testified that on September 5 before the prosecutor’s office said that the kiss was not been amicable. “I felt disrespected,” she said. And he described everything that happened from that moment until the team’s arrival in Spain, where the pressure from the then leader of Spanish football was supposedly applied. The statement was published this Monday exclusively by the Telecinco program Code 10.
In this statement, Hermoso explains how Rubiales was still in Sydney looking for her in the dressing room; also how he approached her in Doha, where the team stopped in Madrid before arriving from Australia to ask her to go out with him in an explanatory video. In addition, there was also pressure from the association’s environment and employees, who tried to convince them on several occasions – always in line with the footballer’s version – to support the president, who was eventually suspended by FIFA and who did this He submitted his resignation three weeks later.
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“The first thing I said to him when I hugged him was ‘what we’ve gotten ourselves into.'” He jumps at me, I stand firm to support us. To the one who came down he told me that “we won this World Cup thanks to me”. The next thing I remember is his hands on my head and I don’t remember hearing anything else,” Hermoso explains in his statement at the Attorney General’s Office headquarters. And he adds: “It was never consensual. I felt disrespected, I wasn’t respected as a player or as a person. I was experiencing something historic and thought that something like that would have consequences. “I didn’t do anything to get myself into this situation.”
The player assumes the initial confusion. And he apologizes to the prosecutor: “I didn’t expect that, I didn’t expect that on this stage… It was the medal ceremony for a world championship.” “A lot of emotion, a lot of joy, but I didn’t wait for this moment or done anything for this act to take place.” After moments of celebration, euphoria and comments of all kinds, Hermoso begins to come to terms with what is happening. Also Rubiales. RFEF employees such as football director Ana Álvarez talk to her before leaving the stadium. The press spokeswoman Patricia Pérez also approaches her: she is forced to get off the bus and Pérez shows her a previously written statement so that she can give her consent.
At the stadium and at the airport
“He shows me a scripture that I haven’t said a word about. And I said, “But why do I have to do this?” We have to do something, we have to stop this. And I said to him, “Well, do whatever you want.” But I didn’t say or write a word of that scripture. “Once again I felt like I had to do something,” says Hermoso. This was the statement that the RFEF sent to all the media to defend that there was no conflict between the two, that the kiss was mutual, an act of affection in a moment of euphoria. Something the athlete denies. That she and her family continued to be under pressure.
The quiet President Rubiales looked for her again at the airport. To convince her to help him: “I am a very good person and you are also a very good person, and if you help a good person…” he told her, according to Hermoso’s story, who added: “I got very nervous, I didn’t have to appear in any videos. He told me: “You have to help me for my two daughters who are sitting crying on the plane.” He asked me to help him clear up an act he had committed. “I didn’t feel like I had to help anyone.”
Hermoso explains that since this last refusal, no one has approached her or looked at her. But the pressure came in other ways. Former coach Jorge Vilda spoke to Jenni’s brother, his cousin and her boyfriend: “They let my brother know that I would be fine if I helped him.” Vilda, like Albert Luque, director of the (men’s) national team, accused of putting pressure on Hermoso.
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