Spain soccer coach regrets his help for Luis Rubiales and asks for forgiveness

BARCELONA, Spain (AP) — First he backed his beleaguered boss. Then he condemned him. Now he’s saying sorry for his half within the scandal that has tarnished Spanish soccer.

The coach of Spain’s males’s nationwide soccer staff begged for forgiveness Friday for applauding the declare by Luis Rubiales that he was the sufferer of a smear marketing campaign from “false feminists” following an uproar after he kissed a participant on the lips on the Women’s World Cup.

“I don’t think I have to resign, I think I have to ask for forgiveness,” Spain coach Luis de la Fuente stated in Madrid in his first public look since Rubiales kissed Jenni Hermoso on Aug. 20 after the ultimate in Sydney, Australia. “I made a human error. It was inexcusable.”

De la Fuente spoke one week after he clapped a number of occasions throughout an emergency basic meeting of the Spanish soccer federation when Rubiales, the group’s president, refused to step down as was anticipated. Rubiales’ speech included claims that Hermoso had consented to his kiss through the awards ceremony – a declare she has denied – and towards what he referred to as the “scourge” of feminism in Spain.

Spain’s Acting Deputy Prime Minister, Yolanda Díaz, stated De la Fuente and girls’s nationwide staff coach Jorge Vilda have been “not fit to hold” their posts.

“I have received harsh criticism, and it is completely deserved,” De la Fuente stated Friday. “If I could go back in time, I would not do that again. We all have to do more for equality. Me too. And I am working on that.”

De la Fuente stated he was caught off guard by Rubiales’ speech and that his applause occurred in a “situation of maximum stress and tension.” He stated he was satisfied Rubiales was going to announce he was stepping down, as was extensively reported in native media.

FIFA, the governing physique of world soccer, provisionally droop Rubiales for 90 days a day after his speech. Hours after his boss was suspended, De la Fuente issued an announcement condemning Rubiales’ conduct after Spain beat England to win the Women’s World Cup ultimate.

Interim federation president Pedro Rocha, who Rubiales organized to be his provisional successor, has stated that the federation fully backs De la Fuente.

Rocha, nonetheless, didn’t give Vilda the identical backing. He stated Thursday that Vilda’s future could be determined after a gathering on the federation subsequent week. Most of Vilda’s employees has resigned.

While all the ladies’s staff plus a dozen different gamers have stated they won’t play once more for Spain so long as Rubiales’ stays in cost, just one male participant, Real Betis striker Borja Iglesias, has stated he gained’t play for his nation once more till “things change.”

De la Fuente changed Luis Enrique after final 12 months’s World Cup. He has spent the final decade of his profession within the federation, working his means up from the boys’s youth groups to the senior staff.