EVIL VS. WOMEN: LUIS RUBIALES MUST RESIGN, OR ULTIMATELY COMMIT SUICIDE

The Spanish soccer president is called a sexual loco and, in due time, he’ll know he can’t grab his crotch in a victory pose and kiss his player on the lips without forceful repercussions in his sport

     His face is public, on his backside. We see Luis Rubiales grinning and grabbing his crotch before kissing one player on her lips, Jenni Hermoso, before saying he’d marry her while taking another player, Athenea del Castillo, upon his shoulder on a wild ride across the field in Sydney. At this point, he knows the visuals are global, and that he has become the villain in all evil-vs.-women matters.

     “I felt vulnerable and a victim of an assault,” Hermoso said on social media, “an impulsive, macho act, out of place and with no type of consent on my part. Simply, I was not respected.”

     And sometime soon, Rubiales will leave his role as president of Spain’s soccer federation. Does he have a choice other than exiting via human sacrifice? “I won’t resign,” he repeated four times before a general assembly, saying “false feminists” were calling his lip tickle as “spontaneous, mutual, euphoric and consensual.” It should be made clear here, and forever, that no one is calling any of it consensual except him. He is a male not respecting the modern system and, in the end, he’ll be a perpetrator who made a mockery of his team’s World Cup win while Spanish prosecutors view him as a sexual-aggression loco.

     His sins will carry on forever. You know the disgusted responses of women players everywhere, including America’s Alex Morgan, who said, “I'm disgusted by the public actions of Luis Rubiales. I stand by @Jennihermoso and the Spanish players. Winning a World Cup should be one of the best moments in these players' lives but instead it's overshadowed by assault, misogyny, and failures by the Spanish federation.” His reaction is what they’ve been fighting for decades, and it’s shocking to see it through our TV sets. They still live that way in Spain?

     “At no time did I consent to the kiss he gave me and in no case did I seek to lift the president,” Hermoso said. “I do not tolerate my word being questioned and much less that words that I have not said are made up. The situation shocked me given the celebrations taking place at the moment, and with the passage of time and after delving deeper into those initial feelings, I feel the need to report this incident because I believe that no person, in any work, sports, or social setting should be a victim of these types of non-consensual behaviors. I felt vulnerable and a victim of an impulse-driven, sexist, out of place act without any consent on my part. (W)e as a team don’t deserve such a manipulative, hostile and controlling culture. These types of incidents add to a long list of situations that the players have been denouncing in recent years.”

     So in signing a letter calling for “strong responses from public authorities” — joined by 58 other players — Hermoso hopes the soccer federation will be forced to succumb as FIFA takes a 90-day suspension period to investigate. This should be the end of men acting like gods as women do sporting deeds. Back at the women’s FInal Four, I took umbrage at LSU’s Angel Reese poking fun at Iowa’s Caitlin Clark, an opponent, as she pointed to a ring finger. It’s a wrongful way of slamming a foe when a championship game is over.

     But this — this! — is a monumental opportunity to show the kiss and other groveling as sexual coerciveness. Or whatever, as Megan Rapinoe said of Donald Trump when he took typical shots after the U.S. loss. “It always is, because what he’s saying is fake. It’s a compilation of hit words and hot-button words that don’t actually make any sort of sense or square with reality at all,” she said. “I think, just in general, the way that our team was spoken about over the course of the tournament, it was fake. And it didn’t make sense to me: In 2019, we were ultra-confident, ultra-swaggy — and won everything. And even though we won, we did it in bad taste, according to our critics. This time, we weren’t confident enough, and we don’t have the right ‘mentality.’ And so we lost. It’s just so disingenuous. There’s no way for us to win, and there’s no way for us to lose.”

     Or as La Liga president Javier Tebas wrote on Wednesday: “It is unworthy to coerce the players of the National Team and focus on them or on their reaction. They are not guilty of the image of Spain given by Rubiales. No opportunism or political hypocrisy justifies that the image of Spain has been represented by a madman touching his genitals, forcing kisses, carrying players like a sack and touching (Hermoso) inappropriately at such an important moment. It is not a question of left or right, Rubiales not only undermined Jenni's dignity with his attitude, but also that of Spain.”

     If you don’t believe Tebas, join the media in checking out the “inhumane witch hunt” at a church in Rubiales’ home village of Motril. That’s where his mother, Angeles Bejar, urged Hermoso to “tell the truth.” She did so during a hunger strike, where she said, “I will remain here for as long as my body can. I am willing to die for justice because my son is a decent person and it is not fair what they’re doing.”

     Here’s one potential suicide. Do we have another?

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     Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.