Spain’s women’s team to calculate legal consequences following controversial RFEF call-up
Comment
Spain’s women’s team has decided to remain adamant, after the controversial call up of some of their boycotting players by the RFEF. A joint statement was released which pointed out they would calculate and plan for the legal consequences of rejecting such a call up.
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New coach Montse Tome (the team’s first female coach) formerly took over from the sacked recent one (Jorge Vilda) on Monday, and announced the names of all the players she was calling up to her new team.
This call-up came during a spectacular standoff between the RFEF and the women’s team – a standoff set into motion by an incident at the just concluded FIFA Women’s World Cup, where former-RFEF president Luis Rubiales kissed Jenni Hermoso on the lips during the prize-giving ceremony.
About 81 players boycotted the RFEF in the controversy that followed, calling for three things: the resignation of the RFEF president, the sack of coach Jorge Vilda, and the implementation of important structural changes that would make the federation more conducive for women.
To satisfy the desires of the women players, the new RFEF president has sacked Jorge Vilda, and Luis Rubiales was also convinced to resign. A female coach was given to the women’s team for the first time in the person of Montse Tome, who was assisting the former coach.
Yet the female players seem unsatisfied hitherto, calling for changes that have been largely-unspecific and enigmatic. It was in this situation that female coach, Montse Tome made her controversial call-up on Monday, including more than twenty of the boycotting women’s team players in her list.
She did not do this in the legal way, though, which could offer the players a level of safety as they continue their controversial boycott.
A battle has begun between the RFEF and their women’s players, and FIFA would be watching closely to make sure that any blunder by the football federation receives adequate legal punishment. The women’s team also know that refusal to play for their nation in this manner would cost them 30,000 Euros each, along with bans of up to 15 years. Therefore this statement was released on several social media outlets, in the wake of the call-up many could call a trap:
‘The players of the women’s senior national soccer team want to state, following the call and the subsequent press conference of the new national coach, Montse Tomé, the following: What was expressed in our statement of September 15, 2023, makes clear and without any option for another interpretation our firm [the 30 players] will not be called up for justified reasons. These statements remain in full force and effect.’
‘During the following days to that statement, we want to make public knowledge that nothing different from it has been transmitted to any member of the RFEF, so we expressly request that the information that is publicly transmitted is rigorous.’
‘We as elite professional players and after everything that happened today, we will study the possible legal consequences to which the RFEF exposes us by putting us on a list from which we had asked not to be called for reasons already explained publicly and in more detail to the RFEF, and thus take the best decision for our future and our health.’
‘We do think it is relevant to point out, in this regard, that the call has not been made in due time and form, in accordance with art. 3.2 of Annex I of the Regulations on the Status and Transfer of FIFA Players, so we understand that the RFEF is not in a position to require us to attend the same.”
‘We regret once again that our Federation has placed us in a situation that we would never have wished.’
Apart from FIFA, the world awaits the outcome.
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