ON THE high-profile stage of the Champions League draw on Thursday evening, England women’s coach Sarina Wiegman took the opportunity to show solidarity with Jenni Hermoso and Spain’s World Cup-winning team.

During Spain’s medal ceremony at the 2023 World Cup last month, Hermoso was forcefully kissed by Spanish Football Federation (RFEF) president Luis Rubiales, and the incident has gone on to overshadow the triumph of the Spanish women’s team on the pitch.

“We all know the issues around the Spanish team,” Wiegman said as she received Uefa’s Women's Coach of the Year award for 2023.

“And It really hurts me as a coach, as a mother of two daughters, as a wife and as a human being.

“It shows that, though the game has grown so much, there is a long way to go in women’s football and in society.

“I would like to dedicate this award to the Spanish team, the team that played such great football at the World Cup that everyone enjoyed.

“This team deserves to be celebrated and deserves to be listened to.”

Spain have been forced to sacrifice their post World Cup joy and celebrations in order to focus on a man in power who evidently shouldn’t have been there in the first place.

It is a familiar tale in sports and in women’s sports in particular.

Wiegman’s comments came while standing on the stage alongside the president of Uefa, Aleksander Ceferin.

Uefa, where Rubiales holds the position of vice president, are among a number of official organisations that have reacted slowly and inadequately to the incident, while the RFEF even continue to back their president.

As this unnecessary RFEF defence rumbles on, Rubiales’s uncle, Juan, has spoken out to Spanish media, and in El Mundo described his nephew Luis Rubiales as: “A man with a clear machista [male chauvanist] tinge, very arrogant.

“He is a man obsessed with power, obsessed with luxury, obsessed with money, even with women.

“This boy needs a programme of social re-education and re-education in his relationship with women,”

Amid calls to resign, at a recent RFEF extraordinary general assembly, Luis Rubiales repeated the line “I will not resign” as if he were a politician at a rally, his chums in the front rows applauding as he did so.

There are a lot of parallels between Rubiales’s actions during and after the World Cup presentation ceremony and poisonous politics.

There is a man in power and he and his cronies earn plenty of money from being in these positions, in this case within the RFEF. Outsiders can only join these gangs if they toe the line.

The Spain men’s head coach Luis de la Fuente and women’s head coach Jorge Vilda were among those applauding Rubiales’s speech.

There has been an ongoing rift between Vilda and many of his own players, as demonstrated starkly during the final whistle celebrations at the World Cup final when players and coaching staff celebrated separately.

Unusual scenes, maybe, but not surprising given the history of unrest within the Spain camp amid reports of Vilda’s controlling methods.

So of course Rubiales’s speech mentioned a salary raise for Vilda and was given a standing ovation.

They all applaud him despite glaring wrongdoings and damage to the institutions they oversee and the people subsequently affected.

A circle of money and power at the top of the Spanish game, just as there is at the top of many other organisations, sporting or political, shared around amid backslapping and applause, even in the face of the most indefensible antics.

It leads to a cycle of obnoxious men like Rubiales being handed positions of power, as the passing around of various high-paid, high-status jobs remains an old boys’ club.

The blatantly obvious nature of Rubiales’s actions on this occasion would surely lead to some kind of action and a chance to root out such cronyism, in the RFEF at least.

But it has not been so simple, which is why the Spain women’s team need continued high-profile support such as that shown by Wiegman.

If not, Rubiales might still exit quietly out of the back door, but nothing will change.

The Spain women’s team have tried to use this incident as their chance to fight back against a long-running but so far underlying problem that has been brewing below the surface, out of the public gaze.

It has meant they’ve had to sacrifice a World Cup winning moment in order to do so, and Hermoso has had to deal with abuse from supporters of men like Rubiales, but this incident was so obvious and so public that it was the best chance to expose issues that had been festering for some time.

Despite this, Rubiales’s actions and those underlying issues have not been dealt with in a swift and appropriate manner.

The RFEF have even threatened legal action after Hermoso and the union representing her and the Spanish players released a statement.

“Jennifer Hermoso wants to emphasise that she did not give consent to Mr Luis Manuel Rubiales Bejar to kiss her during the World Cup Final,” said the statement by the players’ union Futpro.

Within this statement, Hermoso herself added: ”I want to clarify that, as seen in the footage, I never consented to the kiss he gave me, and of course, I never intended to lift the president in the air.

“I do not tolerate that my word is distrusted, and even less so, the invention of words I never said.”

In response, the RFEF threatened legal action against Hermoso and Futpro and went to embarrassing lengths, in an article almost as long as this column, to prove that Rubiales did nothing wrong.

If such a detailed denial from the federation in power is the reaction to something so obviously undeniable, it is no wonder the Spanish players might have felt reluctant to speak out before now.

It reflects a problem across society of women not being believed before becoming the target themselves for daring to speak out.

“From our union, we want to emphasise that no woman should find herself being doubted in this kind of sensitive situations, even more when there is such undeniable TV footage that has been viewed globally, and certainly, they should not be involved in non-consensual actions,” continued Futpro’s statement, signed by 77 Spanish players.

“The players of the Spanish National Football Team, current World champions, expect a strong response from the public authorities so these actions do not go unpunished.

“We want to conclude this statement by calling for real structural changes that will help the National Team continue to grow, in order to pass on this great success to future generations.

“It saddens us that such an unacceptable incident is tarnishing the greatest sporting achievement of Spanish women’s football.

“After everything that has happened during the award ceremony of the Women’s World Cup, we want to declare that all the players who sign this letter will not return to a call-up for the National Team if the current leaders continue.”

The challenge of performing well in the World Cup was supposed to be the main focus for the Spain players.

But despite winning the thing for the first time in their history, the bigger challenge for these players came after the tournament due to the actions of their federation’s leader.

The job of those in the RFEF should be to facilitate such achievements and ensure they are enjoyed.

Instead, the federation, its president, and the coach it put in charge of Spain’s women’s team made things more difficult.

These Spain players have won the World Cup despite the men in charge of their team and federation, not because of them, and need continued full support in their ongoing fight for equality.