The coach of Spain’s males’s soccer staff, Luis de la Fuente, has informed the pressured kiss trial of ex-federation chief Luis Rubiales that he initially knew nothing of the scandal’s scale or efforts to silence it.
Rubiales provoked worldwide outrage for the kiss on Jenni Hermoso after she helped Spain beat England within the 2023 World Cup remaining in Australia.
The scandal pressured Rubiales to resign in shame that yr and has made Hermoso an icon of the battle towards macho tradition and sexism in sport.
Prosecutors are looking for two and a half years in jail for Rubiales, one yr for sexual assault for the pressured kiss and 18 months for allegedly coercing Hermoso, 34, to downplay the incident.
Rubiales, 47, has referred to as the kiss an innocuous “peck between friends celebrating” and denied any coercion.
De la Fuente informed the nationwide court docket simply outdoors Madrid that on the journey again to Spain he knew nothing a couple of press assertion ready in Hermoso’s title to hush the rising furore.
The boys’s staff coach, appointed throughout Rubiales’ 2018-2023 tenure, mentioned he discovered concerning the kiss on the airplane however was “unaware of the scale” of the backlash.
He denied collaborating in a disaster assembly between prime federation officers on 23 August 2023, saying he “didn’t exchange a word” with federation press chief Patricia Pérez Requena.
“They told me, ‘We’re getting into a huge mess with the kiss business’, but we went on to speak about matters that concerned me,” De la Fuente mentioned.
Former communications director Pablo García Cuervo, sacked by the federation after the scandal erupted, defended his function within the drafting of the assertion.
He informed the court docket he wrote it from an interview Hermoso had given to Spanish media and obtained her permission.
He denied asking Hermoso to seem in a video with Rubiales because the scandal grew again dwelling as a result of he feared she would “change her version”.
“Hermoso is a rather influence-prone and pretty manipulable person, so she can change her opinion,” Cuervo mentioned.
Hermoso informed the opening day of the trial on Monday that she felt “disrespected” after a non-consensual kiss that “should not happen in any social or work setting”.
The trial is because of proceed till 19 February.
