Fifteen players on Spain’s national women’s soccer team have said they will not play under its current coach, sparking a public mutiny that drew a stern rebuke from the Spanish soccer federation.
The 15 players this week wrote identical letters, according to a statement released by the federation on Thursday, in which they threatened to quit the national team unless their coach, Jorge Vilda , was fired. The athletes, according to news reports in Spain, are frustrated at several aspects of Vilda’s approach, and the federation’s statement alluded to those concerns, saying the players had written about the effect of Vilda’s management and coaching style on “their emotional state and their health.”
The federation responded by saying that not only would it not fire Vilda, who has led Spain since 2015, but that the players must apologize for their actions before they will be allowed back on the team.
The federation “is not going to allow the players to question the continuity of the national coach and his coaching staff, since making those decisions does not fall within their powers,” it said.
At the time, the team’s captain, Irene Paredes, said the players had not asked for Vilda to be fired but “communicated the way we feel.” Alexia Putellas, the injured Barcelona star and world player of the year, expressed her solidarity with her teammate via twitter.
Since then, the situation has clearly escalated. Late Thursday, the federation said it had received 15 identically worded emails from 15 women “in which they state that the current situation affects ‘significantly’ their emotional state and their health and that, ‘as long as it is not reversed,’ they resign from the Spanish national team.”
The federation did not disclose the names of the 15 players who called for Vilda’s ouster. But Spanish news reports said six players from the Champions League runner-up, Barcelona, were among those who had written to the federation, but that Paredes, the captain, and Putellas were not among them. Players on Real Madrid’s roster also did not submit complaints, the reports said.
Putellas responded Friday on Twitter in Spanish, faulting the federation for making the disagreement public. She also disputed the federation’s contention that the players had “renounced” the national team and had demanded Vilda’s ouster. Rather, she said they wanted “situations that affect our emotional state and performance” to be reversed.
“Who would think that eight months before a World Cup a group of top players, which we consider ourselves to be, would make this decision, as it has been understood publicly, on a whim or as blackmail?” she wrote.
She also took issue with what she described as the “infantilizing tone” of the federation’s statement.
The standoff is the latest crisis in the turbulent tenure of Rubiales, the federation chief since 2018 who, in one of his first acts as president, fired the coach of Spain’s men’s national team on the eve of its opening match at the 2018 World Cup. More recently, Rubiales has been under scrutiny after leaked messages revealed a questionable management style and business practices. Rubiales’s uncle, whom he had appointed to his staff on the Spanish federation, has accused the soccer president of using soccer funds to pay for lavish private events. Rubiales has denied those claims.
The federation’s latest statement has left little room for compromise in its new fight. Team selection decisions were “nonnegotiable,” the statement said, declaring that the federation would not call on any soccer players “who do not want to wear the Spain shirt.” If the athletes did not relent, the federation said, it was prepared to move forward with an entirely new squad, “even if they have to play with youth” players.
“The players who have submitted their resignation will only return to the discipline of the national team in the future if they accept their mistake and apologize,” the federation said.
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