Luis Rubiales was pelted by eggs thrown by his personal uncle when the previous head of Spain’s soccer federation was presenting a memoir late Thursday relating his downfall after kissing a participant on the 2023 Girls’s World Cup.
Rubiales was seated on a stool on a low stage when he jumped up and spun shortly making an attempt to keep away from three eggs hurled his means. One impacted on the again of his darkish jacket, and one other splattered towards a display screen behind him as he charged into the small viewers.
“A person entered who I later noticed was my uncle, who’s a troubled man, and all the time has been,” Rubiales informed reporters. “He had some eggs and threw some at me, however I did not know what he had in his palms, and after I first noticed him I believed he is perhaps carrying a weapon.”
Spanish media reported that the uncle was Luis Rubén Rubiales, an actor who has appeared in a number of home tv exhibits.
Spanish police informed The Related Press they arrested the egg thrower. No motive was instantly given for the incident. A video exhibits a bunch of males within the viewers grabbing the uncle instantly after he launched the eggs and escorting him away.
Matias Chiofalo/Europa Press through Getty Pictures
Rubiales additionally had a falling out with one other uncle, Juan Rubiales, a number of years in the past when Juan was working for him on the federation.
His ebook “Matar a Rubiales” (Killing Rubiales) is a 500-page model of his skilled demise after kissing Spain ahead Jenni Hermoso throughout the 2023 Girls’s World Cup awards ceremony. It was the primary time Spain’s girls’s group took dwelling the title. Based on its writer, Rubiales says he was the sufferer of a “conspiracy of various powers of Spanish public life” together with the federal government and “the worthwhile world of feminism.”
Rubiales has all the time denied he kissed Hermoso with out her consent. After initially clinging to energy amid a nationwide uproar, he stepped down beneath immense strain from the federal government, soccer officers, girls gamers and followers.
Earlier this 12 months he was discovered responsible of sexual assault for the unsolicited kiss by a Spanish courtroom. He was fined over $11,000 and ordered to not come inside 650 ft of Hermoso or contact her for a 12 months. Prosecutors had pushed for him to spend over two years in jail. Rubiales was acquitted of a separate cost that alleged he and different officers pressued Hermoso to help him within the aftermath of the kiss.
Hermoso testified in courtroom that Rubiales’ actions “tarnished” what ought to have been “one of many happiest days” of her life.
“I might spent years preventing to win titles for my group, just like the World Cup,” she mentioned. “However all that is occurred to me signifies that I simply have not been in a position to get pleasure from any of it from the second I set foot again in Madrid. I am a world champion, however evidently, even to at the present time, my life has been on standby. I actually have not been in a position to reside freely.”
Rubiales, 48, can also be beneath scrutiny by Spanish authorities probing his 2020 deal to maneuver the Spanish Tremendous Cup to Saudi Arabia.
