MADRID: Spain’s football federation RFEF has appointed Montse Tome to succeed the fired Jorge Vilda as the women’s national team coach, making her the first woman to manage the side, it said on Tuesday.

Tome had been Vilda’s assistant coach since 2018 and has since “established herself as a key player in the national team’s growth”, the RFEF said in a statement.

Vilda’s contract was terminated earlier on Tuesday by the federation’s new board, which was formed after the suspension of RFEF President Luis Rubiales by FIFA over his allegedly non-consensual kiss of a Spanish player Jenni Hermoso after the team won the Women’s World Cup two weeks ago.

The 42-year-old was known for being close to Rubiales and his dismissal had been widely expected after he was seen applauding a belligerent speech in which the football boss refused to resign and railing against “false feminism”.

The RFEF said his dismissal was “the first of a string of restructuring measures” aimed at improving the governance in the wake of the scandal, which has exposed what critics say is a deep-rooted misogyny within Spanish football.

Meanwhile, Spain’s football federation on Tuesday apologised for the “totally unacceptable behaviour” of Rubiales.

In a letter signed by its interim president Pedro Rocha, the RFEF offered its “most sincere apologies... for the totally unacceptable behaviour of its highest institutional representative during the final of the FIFA Women’s World Cup 2023 and in the moments that followed”.

Although the kiss drew condemnation from across the footballing world and beyond, prompting FIFA to suspend him, it was another eight days before the RFEF called for Rubiales to stand down as its president.

But he has refused to resign, defending the kiss as “just a peck” which he claimed was consensual — which Hermoso completely denies.

“The damage caused to Spanish football, to Spanish sport, to Spanish society and to the values of football and sport as a whole has been enormous,” the RFEF said in extending the apology to FIFA, UEFA “and especially the players of the Spanish national women’s team”.

RFEF offered no criticism of Vilda, saying only he had been “key to the remarkable growth of women’s football and that had left Spain as world champions and second in the FIFA rankings”.

Published in Dawn, September 6th, 2023