February 11 – Spain’s disgraced former soccer federation chief Luis Rubiales was to offer his extremely anticipated model of occasions in the present day within the trial over his alleged pressured kiss on Jenni Hermoso that sparked world outrage.
The case has been extensively adopted since opening on February 3 and prosecutors are looking for two-and-a-half years in jail for Rubiales, one yr for sexual assault for the alleged pressured kiss and 18 months for allegedly coercing Hermoso, 34, to downplay the incident.
Rubiales was pressured to resign in shame from his place as Spanish Soccer Federation president in 2023 after kissing Hermoso on the lips following Spain’s triumph at that yr’s Girls’s World Cup in Australia. He has vehemently denied any wrongdoing.
To date he has attended hearings with out intervening as a collection of witnesses testified on the Nationwide Courtroom close to Madrid.
Former girls’s crew supervisor Jorge Vilda and two ex-federation officers, Rubén Rivera and Albert Luque, are additionally because of take the stand.
Within the newest testimony on Monday, present Spain girls’s crew supervisor Montse Tome denied “punishing” Hermoso by dropping her after the notorious kiss.
Tome took the helm of the ladies’s crew in September 2023 after Vilda was sacked amid the uproar. She informed the court docket that “sporting points” led her to omit Hermoso – the all-time high scorer for the nationwide girls’s crew – from her first squad following the incident.
“Jenni had not skilled sufficient and had solely performed a couple of minutes together with her Mexican membership Pachuca,” Tome stated.
“She was going by way of a really disagreeable state of affairs and the media strain we have been having made me take the choice… there have been different gamers in a greater place to characterize the crew.
“It was an distinctive state of affairs and we have been defending her from the media, however after all all the things is totally a sporting choice. It was not a punishment.”
Contact the author of this story, Andrew Warshaw at moc.l1739274026labto1739274026ofdlr1739274026owedi1739274026sni@w1739274026ahsra1739274026w.wer1739274026dna1739274026