Cornered Luis Rubiales, Jorge Vilda left the Spanish team. With the Granada leader suspended by FIFA, after his non-consensual kiss to Jennifer Hermoso in the celebration of the women’s World Cup title, the coach was left without his protector. This was announced by Pedro Rocha, interim president of the Royal Spanish Football Federation (RFEF), this Tuesday, 16 days after conquering the world in Sydney. “I have been unjustly fired,” Vilda said, in an interview with El Larguero this Wednesday. And he explained his state of mind: “I’m as good as you can be after having been world champions.” This time he did not say “champions”, as he had said after winning the title. An attitude that Rubiales had celebrated in the Assembly on Friday, August 25: “Jorge, we are also champions, there were 23 players, but also men on the staff. Let’s not complex ourselves.”
It had not been the only controversial phrase of Rubiales in the Assembly. Nor was it the only one that Jorge Vilda had applauded sitting in the first row of the Las Rozas Auditorium. When the former president repudiated “the scourge of false feminism”, the now former coach cheered him on. “The first thing I want to make clear is that I will never applaud anything sexist and that goes against feminism. That assembly did not know very well what it was going to do, it thought it was going to a resignation. At that time, he makes public that he is renewing me and recognizing my work. I also applaud a management. Since we started in 2018, I have not been told no to anything, that is what I applaud. When you go out, you reflect and think that I would not have applauded some things”, Vilda justified.
Vilda declared that she has interrupted her contacts with Rubiales, who was her great protector. The coach explained how the meeting with Rocha went. “It has been a brief meeting with Pedro Rocha and with the president of equality,” he said. “The explanation they gave me? structural changes. After 17 years in women’s soccer, after leaving my skin as a national team worker, I don’t understand it and it doesn’t seem fair to me, ”she stressed.
“I aspire to lead a great team”
The coach admitted he was ambitious: “I aspire to lead a great club team or a great national team, women’s or men’s.” During the interview, he indicated that, against the evidence, he does not believe that his departure is related to his bad relationship with the players. “They have not told me,” he said. “I think it’s impossible to win a World Cup if we didn’t have a very good feeling”, he counted. However, Vilda has not yet spoken with Jennifer Hermoso, whom she had not mentioned in the statement in which she distanced herself from Rubiales. “I have known Jenni for 16 years. I have seen her become a world reference. I know she’s having a hard time. And I know that she wants all this to happen. I have not talked to her. I have disconnected, ”she stressed. She also assured that she did not participate in any pressure on Hermoso to publicly defend Rubiales, as various sources indicated after the Sydney final.
Vilda resisted the onslaught of 15, as the riot planted by the players in August 2022 is known, when fed up with their work methods and the lack of professionalism of the Federation, they chose to resign from the national team. “After the 3:00 p.m. email, I made my position available,” she recalled. “Rubiales spoke with the players, and with his support and the backing of all of us, we have achieved the star.”
Vilda did not resist, in any case, loneliness. Difficult to overcome when she was left by 11 of her 15 collaborators, already untenable when she distanced herself from Rubiales. “Since the assembly I have not spoken to him again,” she closed. It was late. Too late.
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