The Spanish soccer player Jenni Hermoso spoke after the controversy generated between her and the president of the Royal Spanish Football Federation (RFEF) Luis Rubiales at the 2023 Australia and New Zealand Women’s Soccer World Cup award ceremony.
In the middle of the awarding of medals after Spain was proclaimed world champion for the first time after beating England in the final, Rubiales charged and kissed Hermoso on the mouth, a situation that the player herself asked not to be given “more spin” and assured that it was “a gesture of friendship and gratitude.”
“It has been a totally spontaneous mutual gesture due to the immense joy that winning a World Cup gives. The president and I have a great relationship, his behavior with all of us has been excellent and it was a natural gesture of affection and gratitude,” Hermoso said in a statement provided by the RFEF to EFE.
“You cannot go around a gesture of friendship and gratitude, we have won a World Cup and we are not going to deviate from what is important,” Hermoso added in the statements.
In a video shared by the RFEF, Rubiales officially apologized and said that “there is a fact that I have to regret and it is everything that has happened between me and a player, with a magnificent relationship between the two, as with others, and where, well, surely, I have been mistaken”.
Rubiales assured that in “a moment of maximum effusiveness, without any bad intentions, without any bad faith, what happened happened, very spontaneously, without bad faith on either side.”
Keep reading:
–Final of the Women’s World Cup had more than 16 million viewers in the United Kingdom, according to the BBC
–Luis Rubiales apologized for kissing Jenni Hermoso: “There was no bad faith on either side”
–The Spanish Olga Carmona pronounces on the death of her father: “I know that you have given me the strength to achieve something unique”
