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 Ladies’s World Cup.
Rubiales was seated on a stool on a low stage when he jumped up and spun rapidly attempting 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 at all times has been,” Rubiales instructed reporters. “He had some eggs and threw some at me, however I did not know what he had in his palms, and once I first noticed him I believed he may be carrying a weapon.”
Spanish media reported that the uncle was Luis Rubén Rubiales, an actor who has appeared in a number of home tv reveals.
Spanish police instructed The Related Press they arrested the egg thrower. No motive was instantly given for the incident. A video reveals a gaggle of males within the viewers grabbing the uncle instantly after he launched the eggs and escorting him away.
Matias Chiofalo/Europa Press by way of Getty Photographs
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 e-book “Matar a Rubiales” (Killing Rubiales) is a 500-page model of his skilled demise after kissing Spain ahead Jenni Hermoso throughout the 2023 Ladies’s World Cup awards ceremony. It was the primary time Spain’s girls’s crew took house 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 at all times denied he kissed Hermoso with out her consent. After initially clinging to energy amid a nationwide uproar, he stepped down below immense strain from the federal government, soccer officers, girls gamers and followers.
Earlier this yr he was discovered responsible of sexual assault for the unsolicited kiss by a Spanish court docket. He was fined over $11,000 and ordered to not come inside 650 ft of Hermoso or contact her for a yr. 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 assist him within the aftermath of the kiss.
Hermoso testified in court docket that Rubiales’ actions “tarnished” what ought to have been “one of many happiest days” of her life.
“I might spent years combating to win titles for my crew, 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 plainly, even to this present day, my life has been on standby. I truthfully have not been in a position to dwell freely.”
Rubiales, 48, can be below scrutiny by Spanish authorities probing his 2020 deal to maneuver the Spanish Tremendous Cup to Saudi Arabia.
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