Jorge Vilda: “I have been unjustly dismissed”

Cornered by Luis Rubiales, Jorge Vilda left the Spanish team. With the Granada leader suspended by FIFA, after his non-consensual kiss with Jennifer Hermoso at the celebration of the Women’s World Cup title, the coach was left without his protector. This was announced by Pedro Rocha, interim president of the Royal Spanish Football Federation (RFEF), this Tuesday, 16 days after conquering the world in Sydney. “I have been unjustly dismissed,” Vilda said in an interview with El Larguero this Wednesday. And he explained his state of mind: “I feel as good as can be after having been world champions.” This time he did not say “champions”, as he had said after winning the title. An attitude that Rubiales had celebrated in the Assembly on Friday, August 25: “Jorge, we are also champions, there were 23 players, but also men on the staff. Let’s not get self-conscious.”

It had not been Rubiales’ only controversial phrase in the Assembly. Nor was it the only one that Jorge Vilda had applauded while sitting in the front row of the Las Rozas Auditorium. When the former president repudiated “the scourge of false feminism,” the now former coach cheered him on. “The first thing I want to make clear is that I will never applaud anything that is sexist or that goes against feminism. That assembly did not know very well what it was going for, it thought it was going to a resignation. At that moment he makes it public that he is renewing me and recognizing my work. I also applaud management. Since we started in 2018 I have not been told no to anything, that is what I applaud. When you go out you reflect and think that I would not have applauded some things,” Vilda justified.

Vilda declared that she has interrupted her contacts with Rubiales, who was her great protector. The coach explained what the meeting with Rocha was like. “It was a brief meeting with Pedro Rocha and the president of equality,” he said. “The explanation they gave me? Structural changes. After 17 years in women’s soccer, after giving my all as a national team worker, I don’t understand it and it doesn’t seem fair to me,” she stressed.

“I aspire to lead a great team”

The coach confessed himself ambitious: “I aspire to lead a great club team or a great national team, of women or men.” During the interview he indicated that, contrary to the evidence, he does not believe that his departure is related to his poor relationship with the players. “They haven’t told me,” he said. “I think it is impossible to win a World Cup if we did not have a very good feeling”, he said. However, Vilda has not yet spoken to Jennifer Hermoso, whom she had not mentioned in the statement in which she distanced herself from Rubiales. “I have known Jenni for 16 years. I have seen her become a world reference. I know she’s having a hard time. And I know she wants all of this to happen. I have not talked to her. I have disconnected,” she stressed. She also assured that she did not participate in any pressure on Hermoso to publicly defend Rubiales, as various sources pointed out after the Sydney final.

Vilda resisted the attack of the 15, as the mutiny that the players planted against her in August 2022 is known, when fed up with their work methods and the lack of professionalization of the Federation, they chose to resign from the national team. “After the 3:00 p.m. email, I made my position available,” she recalled. “Rubiales spoke with the players, and with his support and everyone’s support we have achieved the star.”

Vilda did not resist, in any case, loneliness. Difficult to overcome when 11 of her 15 collaborators left her, already unsustainable when she distanced herself from Rubiales. “Since the assembly I have not spoken to him again,” she closed. It was late. Too late.

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