Luis Rubiales, a common footballer turned executive

Usually smiling and joking, Luis Rubiales, 44, is president of the Spanish Football Federation (RFEF) and vice president of UEFA.

Although lately he is seen smiling little.

The serious face, the severe speech, the cocky tone.

Thus he appeared on Wednesday at the press conference in which he explained some information that revealed the goings-on within the federative body and undressed the not always elegant ways of managing the business of Spanish football.

Someone accessed his phone, stole his data and leaked it to El Confidencial.

Hence the harshness of his words: "This is a mafia," he denounced.

“I was outraged, hurt.

He is an honest person.

He has not done anything illegal.

One cannot receive that public lynching”, point out sources close to the president.

And they add, it's not that he was insolent, just "he defended himself and vented."

He did it vehemently and with the occasional anecdote.

Like the one that served him to show himself as the best example of resilience.

When he was barely a month old, he recounted, his sister, a year and a half older, fell on top of him, who was in the crib.

She “she broke my legs from top to bottom.

I had six or seven fractures in each leg.

My father took me to the doctor.

And the doctor told him: 'Look, your son is going to be anything but a footballer'.

And, you know, he has been a bit of everything: a lawyer by training, a trade unionist, an executive and, also, a footballer.

Born in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, he soon returned to Motril, in Granada.

Divorced and father of three girls, two of them minors, he was a footballer of the bunch, for how he handled the ball down the wing, a hard-working winger who made a career at Levante before becoming the savior of a gripped team for the debts of a bankrupt club.

Rubiales, who had studied Law and was one of the veterans, was the one who led his teammates to strike — called off hours before a League match against Recreativo in Huelva, it was 2008 — and achieved, with his tenacity and arrogance, get them out of the well.

That was the first time that he monopolized the spotlights.

And his first frontal confrontation with Javier Tebas, president of LaLiga.

His then teammate Felix Ettien remembers him, whom Rubiales convinced, like the rest of the squad members, that they should show unity against the Valencian club's board.

“He told us that being together would make us stronger.

Most of us had little education.

And he defended our interests.”

The footballers, who had not been paid for more than a year, collected 75% of what was owed by the entity, which ended up in bankruptcy proceedings.

“If it hadn't been for him, we wouldn't have seen a hard one,” recalls Ettien.

The Ivorian, who today has a job in the Federation's maintenance team after having been one of its drivers, all thanks to Rubiales, defends that the president is "a very good friend of his friends."

And he concludes: “He is a hard worker.

He is determined to improve Spanish football.

And he is doing things to the best of his ability.”

Luis Rubiales, by Sciammarella.

After working as an amateur trade unionist as a Levante player and after exhausting his football in second-line teams, Rubiales became president of the Association of Spanish Footballers (AFE), from where he began to act as a scourge of Thebes.

And to run as successor to Ángel María Villar at the head of the RFEF.

If Tebas rose to the presidency of LaLiga by knowing the pipes of Spanish football through the offices, Rubiales achieved the presidency of the Federation for what he had sucked in various changing rooms.

The public image that he offered last Wednesday is not far from that of some workers of the Federation, who assume the strong hand of the president (in office since May 2018), who, they say, has been heard to say once in Las Rozas that it is “better to be frightening than disgusting”.

He was able to give the impression that he directed the institution with a certain caciquil touch, as when he appointed his uncle, Juan Rubiales, as director of the presidential cabinet;

he today he is director of the selection museum.

In addition, Luis Rubiales was in the spotlight when the ethics committee resigned due to the implications of Operation Soule, which was investigating an alleged network of influences in the federal body.

The one from Motril has known, however, to get the favor of the majority of territorial presidents (with the exception of the one from Madrid), who see him as a leader capable of standing up to Tebas.

Today he has the unconditional support of guys like Óscar Fle, president of the Aragonese federation, who was on the opposite side during the electoral process: “Then it turned out that he won and from there he contacted me and asked me to be part of his team.

I spent many years crossing the desert with Villar.

There were a thousand outrages.

And I do not agree with rascality.

I'm not faithful, I'm loyal.

And if I see something I don't like, I say so, period”.

More information

Rubiales gives explanations about the case of the Super Cup: "The management is exemplary"

And although in public opinion the president's conversations and negotiations with Gerard Piqué may turn out to be amoral or unethical, because of how they both maneuvered to remove David Aganzo from the presidency of the AFE or how they talked about the supposed return of the center-back to the Spanish team , his team defends him.

"He's a straight, honest person," says Fle.

Today, he points out, what each territorial receives is known to everyone —"Before it was top secret"—, as is Rubiales' salary, the subject of debate after learning that the income he received in variables was higher if Madrid or Barcelona played the final four of the Super Cup in Saudi Arabia.

salary change

Rubiales, who is also accused of residing in a rented house for a few months at the Federation's expense —despite not receiving the aid because he is already a resident in Madrid— has a fixed salary of €634,518.19 gross —in addition to the 250,000 that he receives as vice president of UEFA— which is complemented by a variable remuneration linked to management.

"I feel well paid," he said Wednesday.

"When I arrived, the federation generated 146 million revenues and now it generates more than 400."

But since his salary generated suspicion, he has already assured that he will change: he will give up the variable with retroactive effect on January 1.

“He took the AFE when it was a ruin and turned it into the first players' union in Europe.

The Federation was at the tail of Europe before its arrival;

now it is about to become the first in the world and catch up with the English in terms of budget and licenses based on population”, indicate RFEF sources.

In addition, he has managed to promote Spain and Portugal as the only European candidacy to host the 2030 World Cup. More or less like the familiarities he takes with Piqué (and Piqué with him), his are a series of decisions that have promoted competitions like the Copa del Rey or the Spanish Super Cup.

In addition, those talks he had with the Barça defender make the footballer more evident than the president, who neither managed to take him to the Tokyo Games nor placed Andorra in one of the easy groups.

"Lies cannot kill good management," he said Wednesday.

And it clings to it to survive this crisis.

One more since he took office four years ago.

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