FYI FIFA: World Cup fairytales end with kissing trophies, not frogs
Interrupting my Substack OOO to ask if the usual FIFA contingent could just... not.
Spain won the Women’s World Cup yesterday. I was watching in a small sports bar in Valencia, one of about three hopeful, then resigned, England supporters. Spain were the worthy winners, and seeing them lift the cup, I felt emotional. Not just for England, who I’d wanted to win (and who had played a fantastic game, Mary Earps, in particular), but also for Spain, and the women’s game in general.
We’ve come a long way in the last ten or twenty years. I remember being apoplectic with rage at primary school because the boys wouldn’t let us play football with them, and it wasn’t a PE option for girls. Rather than start a girls’ team and wow them with our prowess, I went the tattle-tale route and railed at the teachers about the injustice of it all. To be fair, it partly worked, the next year they started a mixed team.
Back then women’s football existed, but we didn’t know much about it. I couldn’t name an England player. It got limited coverage, usually on Channel 4 or a lower-tier Sky channel. Over the years the investment into the women’s game, the excellence on-pitch, and - yes - the realisation by FIFA, channels and sponsors that there is an audience and yes, they can make money from it, has deservedly propelled it into the spotlight.
Stopping mid-final to take a look around and registering that you are 1) watching a women’s world cup final, 2) on a major channel, 3) at a reasonably busy pub, and 4) with other people, including men, invested in the outcome was enough to move me to a few tears - even if my team wasn’t the one holding the trophy.
But in every fairytale there’s a big, bad wolf
It’d be easy to stop there and end on the high note that was yesterday’s result - the cherry on top of the most successful Women’s World Cup in history. But as with any Disney fairy tale, scratch the surface and it starts to look a bit more ‘Brothers Grimm’.
First off, when we called to reserve a table for 11:45 at the - let it be emphasised, local sports bar - the barman told us they didn’t open until 13:30. Eh? ‘But the game starts at 12?’ my partner checked. ‘What game?’ the barman replied.
Now, Valencianos run their schedule a tad later than others, so we can forgive and forget (and I’m sure they can too, given our guesstimate suggests they got an additional forty to fifty covers by opening last minute). Instead I’ll save my ire for the big, bad, and categorically corrupt wolf that is the Fédération Internationale de Football Association, or ‘FIFA’, and the Spanish Football Assocation, or FA.
Sunday’s finalists had already had to start play with the patronising words of the FIFA President Gianni Infantino ringing in their ears:
“I say to all the women – and you know I have four daughters, so I have a few at home – I say to all the women that you have the power to change,” said Infantino. “Pick the right battles, pick the right fights. You have the power to change.
“You have the power to convince us, men, what we have to do and what we don’t have to do. You do it, just do it. With me, with FIFA, you will find open doors. Just push the doors, they are open.
Being told you might want to take it down a notch or two on asking for better or equal pay whilst you’re earning FIFA and their sponsors the most dollars and eyeballs they’ve seen in the history of the Women’s World Cup is galling enough. It’s even more so when you consider that Infantino already knew the Spanish National team needed no lessons on picking their battles.
The Spanish team have been locked in many over the last eighteen months including protracted negotiations with, and complaints against, the Spanish FA. Twelve team members even forfeited their place in a potentially once-in-a-lifetime World Cup 2023 squad in protest over manager Jorge Vilda’s controlling behaviours and strict training regime (down to checking their shopping bags and forcing them to sleep with their bedroom doors open).
Sunday’s win marked the end of a long, tumultuous road, not least the seven games they’d played in the tournament. And yet, to reach that glittering trophy on the podium, they still had to grit their teeth and pass the final obstacle: a row of FIFA and FA officials. Or rather, two in particular who seem intent on reminding us all that the patriarchy is alive and well in 2023, even as they preside over the most-watched Women’s World Cup final in history.
The FIFA fairytale: where you have to kiss a frog to get a trophy
Not only did the winning team have to grit their teeth and smile for Infantino’s infantile comments, they also had to pass the human octopus that was Luis Rubiales, the head of the Spanish FA.
One by one, each of the Spanish team were grabbed, nuzzled, lifted up, and, in the case of Jennifer Hermoso, grabbed by the face and kissed directly on the mouth. Later, on the Instagram Live showing her reaction in the dressing room, she looks shocked to see the video, and shouts at him ‘Hey, I didn’t like that’. She’s then asked by the laughing team: ‘With tongue?’
It’s hard to tell whether or not she’s joking as she is saying all this, and Hermoso herself has come out today to defend Rubiales, saying he got caught up in a happy moment and she didn’t want to dwell on it. Well, of course she doesn’t want to dwell on it - I sure wouldn’t - but she wouldn’t have to if he just hadn’t have done it??
Watching Rubiales on the podium in real time, my spidey senses had already been tingling. It wasn’t just Hermoso he was overly touchy-feely with, but all of the players in the squad. I’d downplayed what I was seeing: Spanish friends are generally quite tactile, and I assumed he must be on very good terms with the team. When a friend shared the video with me later, I was creeped out to have felt something for a reason. Not only does Hermoso say she didn’t like it, the players also have to sit through Rubiales telling them he’s taking them all to Ibiza ‘to celebrate the wedding of Luis Rubiales and Jeni!’ (he says this himself).
At the very least, it’s supremely cringe, and disrespectful. At worst, it’s an act of machismo aggression. Either way, it feels another reflection of the disrespect metered out to women who are expected to be mere sidekicks to FIFA officials and their whims.
But come on.
Can women not even win THE WORLD CUP without having to fight off creeps to lift the trophy?
Could Infantino and Rubiales, two men employed (and paid handsomely) by FIFA and the Spanish FA to lift up and celebrate women’s football, not give this team their moment in the spotlight, free from their performing, provoking and patronising?
And how the hell is it possible that a man can kiss a woman against her will on live, international television, and not be held to account?
But of course, this is not just possible, but an almost quotidian occurrence for women anywhere. And it’s a daily occurrence for men to simply dismiss it: after all, just look at the 45th President of the United States.
Women have generally been socialised to always give deference to protocol, to make life easy for others, to roughen their paths if it means smoothing others’. Even for the most famous sportswomen in the world, live on the country’s biggest channels, standing next to royalty!
Is it no wonder that in front of an audience of millions, at a pinnacle life moment, in front of the Queen of Spain for chrissakes, the women chose to go along with it? What’s a few moments of discomfort on the way to everlasting glory? What’s an extra frog to kiss when your next will be firmly on the actual World Cup trophy?
The winners of yesterday’s World Cup deserve to enjoy their fairytale ending free from wandering hands and dismissive words. They don’t need Princes like William (thankfully given he didn’t bother to show up) and they certainly don’t want frogs like Rubiales. They understandably want the recognition they deserve from FIFA and the FA for their bloody hard work.
(And better contracts, working conditions and equal or improved pay, whilst they’re at it).
Don’t force World Cup Champions to kiss frogs. Kick the frogs out instead.
There’s something seriously wrong if we think that what happened yesterday on international television doesn’t justify serious disciplinary action against Rubiales, if not immediate dismissal. I’m sure that FIFA’s own HR guidebook doesn’t allow for such conduct, let alone so publicly - not that it should matter. Right now, it’s not clear he’ll even get a yellow card.
I totally understand why Hermoso doesn’t wish to make a fuss and risk overshadowing her and her team’s wonderful achievement. She’s been put in a terrible position. But if Rubiales is not suspended or sacked then FIFA and the Spanish FA are tacitly condoning his behaviour. With their track record I wouldn’t be surprised if he escapes with neither.
In which case, it becomes even clearer that everything that women’s football teams - and champions - achieve, is in spite of FIFA, not because of it. That message may run seemingly counter to the ‘proof’ that FIFA and the FAs give a crap, seen in the sheer amount of funding pushed into women’s football, especially in the UK. But if women’s own interests are not prioritised in the development of the game, then I tend to agree with Camilla Long’s somewhat cynical view: women’s football risks being reduced to a token; a ‘palette cleanser’ used to rehabilitate an increasingly dirty men’s game.
I hope that the women’s national teams are galvanised by the success of 2023 to continue to advocate for tangible improvements to the game as they experience it; God knows I wouldn’t have the energy. But the question is even if they ask the right questions, can the current football governing bodies be trusted to give women’s football the happy ever after it deserves?
I’d love them to prove me wrong, but right now their empty words and protestations feel more ‘poison apple’ than ‘magic beans’. And whatever they jabber on about as solutions, if no clear action against Rubiales is taken, I’m running away from this suspiciously hairy grandmother. If only the players could too.
And with that small intermission rant over, I’m back on my Substack OOO. See you on 1 September when normal service resumes.
PS: If you found yourself nodding along to this post, I’d love it if you shared it with a likeminded friend <3
Excellent piece. I'll share this. I couldn't believe it when I saw that kiss. I didn't know it wasn't the only one. JESUS!!!