It seems as though Women's sports are just not content to have the amount of publicity that it does about how this year's Women's World Cup was actually pretty exciting, was watched around the world by millions of people, and provided a good level of football of the soccer variety action. It was a good tournament and I enjoyed it a great deal more than I thought I would going as far as to wake up or stay up multiple nights in order to catch "the game."
There were campaigns around the world that continued to approach the sexism angle of things and still harped on about the "equal pay" thing even though it is really well-known that the difference between income with the Women's and Men's world cup is in the billions. There were commercials attempting to shame people into watching the WWC and calling anyone who didn't enjoy the games or wasn't interested in watching them at all a bigot. That all kind of got pushed to the wayside though and I was happy to see that.
However, it was only a day or so after the WWC was finished that we started to see the narrative shift from being about the sport to being about the supposed patriarchy or sexism or something like that. We couldn't even wait long enough for Spain to have their trophy before the accusations, some of which are crazy, to start coming out of the woodwork.
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It started out with Spain FIFA Football President Luis Rubiales getting really affectionate towards some of the winners of the World Cup and him being immediately accused of groping and inappropriate conduct. Then of course there were immediately calls for him to be fired because of this, mostly coming from American media outlets who I guess haven't had enough to complain about in a while. I'm sure Megan Rapinoe will weigh in on this at some point.
Is it at all possible that this might just be a cultural difference though? I know that the few European people, particularly Western European people I have met tend to have quite a bit more affectionate greeting including kisses on the face even when they just meet someone. I'm not pretending to be the authority here but honestly, would this guy really have the gall to do something that would be considered inappropriate in front of all the world's (ok, some of the world's) cameras.
This wasn't good enough for some people out there though as they went further to say that Luis Rubiales was grabbing his crotch in victory when Spain would do well on the field and this one is particularly silly in my mind.
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Despite the fact that this was being filmed in I presume the best cameras that exist at the time, this was the best quality image they could get of the "horrifying incident." What about the guy next to him that appears to be putting his tie back on at the moment, was he naked a while ago? What about the girl who has her hands on her face? Is she a self-abuser?
This speculation is just crazy to me and while I would imagine that there are some people out there that would really like to see some things change for the better in sports or perhaps just the world altogether, these stories seem to be hit pieces against a man that some people simply do not like. Rubiales apparently feels the same way because he called the people who were making accusations against him "idiots”, “stupid”, “fools” and “losers."
Just going after the one guy wasn't enough because someone had to up the ante and say that one of Spain's coaches was grabbing another coach by the boobies at one point during the game
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Take a second to look at that photo. Is that not simply a man that is so excited that he is reaching behind him to embrace all those on the staff that are behind him. He didn't even look in their direction. Either this was an accident or Jorge Vilda has got boob tracking devices imbedded into his hands.
Vilda just happens to have a close bond with Luis Rubiales and he is probably being attacked simply because of his association with him.
I think that it is important here to recognize that while I am sure there are genuine sexual predators out there that we can't just start accusing everyone and anyone of being so unless we want the world to become a Liam Neeson type environment where because of the metoo movement he will no longer read lines with a female costar unless there is a witness present or a Mike Pence situations where he will not have dinner alone with any woman in any capacity unless they are his wife.
Part of the reason why Americans including myself were actually pleased to see the USA eliminated from the World Cup is because they have spent years turning the sport into some sort of space for activism rather than just playing for the love of the sport and trying to best represent their country. I realize that people are just trying to sell news space by coming up with something provocative for the modern-day version of "the papers" also. In the end I don't think anything will change and even if they do fire both of these guys I don't think that this is anything other than an unneeded search for needing to have a problem with something.
I liked the Women's World Cup this year. I liked it more than the Men's previous World Cup. I would like for them to continue on a trajectory of making Women's sports more exciting by well, making them more exciting. You can't guilt me into watching them but you can chase me away by doing dumb shit like this.
To be fair to the players it isn't them that are bringing this up, it is just some rather unknown people in the media and fringe politicians that are trying to make a name for themselves by getting into the spotlight.