If it were not for the 90-day provisional suspension that FIFA imposed on Luis Rubiales on August 26, he could exercise his position as president of the Royal Spanish Football Federation (RFEF). For now, the leader from Granada will not be able to occupy the easy chair to which he clings due to his refusal to resign until November 24. Right now the key to the disqualification for a longer period of the president of Spanish football is held by the world body. The logical thing is that if the FIFA Disciplinary Committee has imposed a three-month provisional suspension, the final sanction is for a longer period.
The resolution of the Administrative Court of Sport (TAD) to consider only serious, and not very serious, the non-consensual kiss of the Granada leader to the player Jennifer Hermoso has prevented the Higher Sports Council (CSD) from making the same decision as the body that FIFA. The reasoned request that the CSD has sent to act ex officio and suspend Rubiales in a precautionary manner runs the risk that the TAD will not even admit it, although in the text to which this newspaper has had access, it argues that there are precedents from the sports court itself. If admitted, the parties must be heard, so it can take at least a month to resolve.
The times to resolve the serious file opened by the TAD and for which Rubiales can be disqualified from one month to two years, are even longer. The experts consulted set it at a minimum of three months. The CSD has another way, that of going to contentious-administrative, which would also take a long time.
With this landscape, FIFA is the one that can act most quickly. The normal thing is that he resolves before the 90 days that he has imposed on Rubiales, which are his deadline. It would not be surprising if the Disciplinary Committee of the world body issues its final sentence in more or less a month. Even so, there could even be a circumstance that could return Rubiales to his position before the aforementioned November 24 if the president of FIFA’s disciplinary body, the Colombian Jorge Iván Palacio, decided to end the provisional suspension early. This seems unlikely, considering that Palacios is an activist in his country defending the rights of women and the LGTBI communities. For a long time he traveled throughout Colombia to spread the need to respect gender equality among his compatriots. Palacios accelerated the open file and decreed the suspension for three months the day after Rubiales refused to resign in the assembly, when everyone expected it, and proclaimed that “the false feminism that exists in Spain is a scourge.”
The facts for which FIFA opened a file and issued the 90-day provisional suspension could constitute violations of articles 13.1 and 13.2 of the FIFA Disciplinary Code. The aforementioned articles refer to offensive behavior and violations of the principles of fair play and include violating the basic rules of dignified conduct or behaving in a way that brings football or FIFA a bad reputation. Rubiales’s touching of his genitals in the box clearly conforms to the regulations for which he can be sanctioned for several years.
Another way for Rubiales to stop being president of the federation is the motion of censure. The institution that Pedro Rocha now chairs on an interim basis has leaked that the ministerial order that regulates electoral processes in sports federations prevents promoting the motion of censure. However, this is at least interpretable. Rocha and his barons have a margin until October 12 to prevent the electoral process from being opened before one year has passed before the elections are held, as the regulations say. Another thing is that Rocha and the presidents of the territorial ones do not dare.
You can follow EL PAÍS Sports on Facebook y Twitterpoint here to receive our weekly newsletter.
Subscribe to continue reading
Read without limits
