A grabbed crotch, a kiss, a strange fireman’s lift and a crumbling empire. The brazen and wholly unacceptable actions of the Spanish football federation president, Luis Rubiales, have surely ended his fiefdom at the top of his country’s game despite his insistence on Friday that he will not resign. How, though, did he feel so emboldened and so invincible that he thought he could lewdly grab his groin, then later plant a kiss squarely on the lips of striker Jenni Hermoso and carry Athenea del Castillo over his shoulder with the eyes of millions trained on him?
Welcome to the culture of football. Rubiales’s actions are not abnormal, they are symptomatic of a system that allows those in power to consolidate it to such an extent that they feel immortal.
