Forgive me, as I don’t know much about “the sports”, but my understanding is that when a football team wins the World Cup, what happens next is something along the lines of absolute unparalleled national ecstasy and hoodallally, followed by joyous entries in the history books. Every team member becomes, essentially, a living god, celebrated across the land; and, most important, they never have to pay for another pint again in their lives. Everyone wants to buy a World Cup winner a pint.
The outrage and fury, then, that the Spanish women’s football team must be feeling right now — two weeks after winning the World Cup — will be unprecedented. For what should be the greatest weeks of their lives have been outright stolen by Luis Rubiales — the man who grabbed the head of the national star Jenni Hermoso and forced a kiss on her, in front of a global audience.
When Hermoso later stated that this had been against her will, and that she wanted an apology — for, to be brisk, a non-famous management dude trying to get off with a newly minted global icon — he doubled down, refused to apologize and then threatened to sue her.
What should be the greatest weeks of their lives have been outright stolen by Luis Rubiales.
And now, here we are, two weeks later — and what should have been a Spanish August of open-topped bus parades and unlimited champagne fountains has, instead, turned into an international controversy. It’s had the Spanish government getting involved; prompted the whole Spanish women’s team and backroom crew to resign, in protest; and resulted in such a diplomatic mess at the Spanish FA — which still, insanely, backs Rubiales — that at one point it looked like Barcelona and Real Madrid would be kicked out of the Champions League by UEFA in retaliation.
I don’t want to be overly feminist — I’ve probably already used up all my Allowably Strident Feminist Tokens for 2023 on Johnny Depp v Amber Heard — but: this is all because one man wouldn’t say sorry! Rubiales just had to say sorry! “In the heat of the moment, I did something I was later told was unwanted and inappropriate, and I apologize. Well done to our amazing national team.” That’s all it would take! Then all the bus-top parades and champagne could begin!
Instead, the mad ego of Rubiales meant that he was willing to not only trash the legacy of the Women’s World Cup victory, but actively destroy Spanish football. And not just women’s football: he’s now f***ing over the men, of Barcelona and Real Madrid too. Plus his own mother — for Mrs Rubiales, in a gesture that suggests Luis was one of those boys who was “loved a bit too much” — took to a Spanish church on Monday to begin a hunger strike in support of her son, which ended when she was admitted to hospital on Wednesday.
When misogynist men reel off the list of historical male accomplishments that “prove” they are the sex most fitted to power — the technologies of road-building, warfare, hypocaust underfloor heating and the Internet — they seem not to realize there is one, vital technology many have not yet mastered: the apology.
And not just women’s football: he’s now f***ing over the men.
Obviously #notallmen, but there is a notable cohort of dudes who believe that to apologize is “unmanly”, that you should never back down. That, when confronted, you should redouble your attack. That to admit you are wrong would be to obliterate either your entire sense of self or, somehow, your own, mad genitals. I cannot think of a more extreme or textbook case of how desperately we need to teach boys, and men, that it’s absolutely possible to apologize, or admit you were wrong, without exploding.
In 1966, after winning the World Cup, every single member of the men’s England squad received an MBE, and two of them were knighted.
In 2023, after winning the World Cup, every single member of the women’s Spanish squad had to spearhead an impromptu global feminist protest.
It really is a game of two halves.
Caitlin Moran is a journalist and the author of More than a Woman, How to Build a Girl, and Moranthology