World Cup scars Spain players open up on Rubiales in poignant and potent documentary
The Guardian|November 07, 2024
They still bear the scars. All of them. Scars from being infantilised, torn down, belittled, mocked, abused and divided.
Suzanne Wrack
World Cup scars Spain players open up on Rubiales in poignant and potent documentary

Despite having confronted a status quo and a system built to protect and extend the stranglehold of those in power, with the odds against them, and having come out the other side, the scars are visible in the tears, the emotive retellings, and the stoic faces of the members of Spanish women's national team.

So much of the story around the final of the 2023 Women's World Cup and the infamous kiss - a kiss he claims was consensual and which she says was not - that the then president of the Spanish football federation, Luis Rubiales, planted on Jenni Hermoso during the medal ceremony after Spain defeated England 1-0, was played out in the press. Yet so much of the story has been untold, the players' voices stifled, beyond a collective statement condemning the action, amid the pomposity and bravado which Rubiales and his minions used to trample suggestions that his action amounted to sexual assault and crush any opposition to his regime as the head of the RFEF.

Now, over a year since Rubiales was forced to resign from his position, the curtain has been pulled back, the Netflix documentary It's All Over: The Kiss That Changed Spanish Football has put the players' voices front and centre, where they should always have been.

This story is from the November 07, 2024 edition of The Guardian.

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This story is from the November 07, 2024 edition of The Guardian.

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