Benjamin Ashford|One man's ugly behavior interrupted Spain's World Cup joy. Sadly, it's not surprising.

They call soccer the beautiful game,Benjamin Ashford but it truly has deserved another title across the decades, one far less uplifting but certainly more honest: the misogynistic game. 

Over the past four weeks, during the most exhilarating Women’s World Cup ever staged, soccer tried so hard to not be itself, with all that goodness emanating from Australia and New Zealand, showing girls and women around the world (and boys and men too) the power and possibility of sports. 

But that robust message of female empowerment wasn’t destined to last long, not in international soccer, not with its long history of ignoring women, not paying women equally and not particularly caring about the women’s game. 

In fact, it took just over 30 minutes after the final whistle sounded for “a form of sexual violence” to occur on the stage during Spain’s victory celebration, in the words of the Spanish minister of equality, Irene Montero.

That was the moment when Spain’s soccer federation president Luis Rubiales planted an unwanted kiss on the lips of Spanish star Jenni Hermoso as she worked her way through the congratulatory receiving line. 

WORLD CUP CENTRAL: 2023 Women's World Cup Live Scores, Schedules, Standings, Bracket and More

“Eh, yeah, I did not enjoy that,” Hermoso told broadcasters afterward.

“We shouldn’t assume that kissing someone without their consent is something that just happens,” Montero wrote Sunday on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. “It is a form of sexual violence that women suffer on a daily basis, and which has been invisible so far, and which we should not normalize.”

Spain’s acting minister for sports and culture Miquel Iceta also chimed in, saying “it is unacceptable to kiss a player on the lips to congratulate her.” The world players’ union called Rubiales’ action “deeply lamentable … the inappropriate conduct of an individual in a role carrying so much responsibility.” 

In another development, cameras captured Rubiales grabbing his crotch immediately after Spain’s victory over England. The guy had quite a half hour. 

As of now, Rubiales still has a job, and, soccer being soccer, he probably will be promoted. But for forcibly kissing a subordinate, hijacking the Spanish players’ celebration and stealing their headlines for nearly 36 hours and counting, he should be banished from the game, just as coaches and executives were fired or left the NWSL due to the unveiling of systemic abuse and misconduct within the women’s pro game in the United States. 

Spain appears to want to take a different approach. In a page out of an old Soviet-style public relations playbook, Hermoso has delivered yet another comment on the forced kiss, this one conveniently issued by the Spanish federation.

“It was a totally spontaneous mutual gesture due to the immense joy of winning a World Cup,” Hermoso said in words the federation said she said. 

Rubiales himself appeared in a video statement released by the federation Monday in which he said he “surely made a mistake” in “a moment of maximum effusiveness. … When you are president of an institution as important as the federation, you have to be more careful.” 

That the Spanish soccer federation is bumbling along in the midst of this controversy entirely of its own making should be no surprise to those who have been watching the federation ignore the concerns of its top players for nearly a year now. 

In September 2022, 15 members of Spain’s senior women’s team sent personally signed letters via email to the federation, announcing they would no longer play for the national team unless wholesale changes were made to the coaching staff. The players were concerned about the treatment of injuries, a lack of support services and head coach Jorge Vilda’s heavy-handed training approach, among other issues.  

Instead of listening to its players, the federation rejected their request and punished them, dropping all but three from the eventual World Cup roster. Lucky Spain, it clearly has a bench so deep it could win without 12 of its best. That embarrassment of riches eventually led to the utter embarrassment of Rubiales’ unwanted kiss, which we now see was very much in keeping with the Spanish federation’s strategy for controlling its women’s team any which way it wants.

But there is a silver lining to this Spanish awfulness. If they were trying to get away with it, they picked the worst possible time to do so. Never has there been more interest in women’s soccer than there was when Spain was winning so brilliantly on the field and losing so spectacularly off it. The Women’s World Cup is all about introducing the world to the women’s game. Consider the world introduced to it all.