The head of the Spanish soccer federation, under fire after he grabbed and kissed a member of the winning team fully on the lips at a Women’s World Cup medals ceremony last weekend in Australia, insisted on Friday that he would not step aside, saying he was the victim of “social assassination.”
News reports had said that the federation chief, Luis Rubiales, would hand in his notice as president of the Royal Spanish Football Federation at noon local time after five years at the helm, but he instead took a defiant stand.
“I will not resign,” he said, adding that “I will fight this to the end” and accusing his critics of “false feminism.”
After the World Cup final in Sydney on Sunday, Mr. Rubiales was captured on video kissing Jennifer Hermoso, a Spanish forward, and in a post-match video, she was seen apparently making her distaste of the kissing incident known, saying, “Hey, but I didn’t like that!”
Mr. Rubiales, who had offered a tepid apology on Monday as the outrage began to grow, offered a drastically different account on Friday. Ms. Hermoso, he said, lifted him off his feet and “moved me close to her body.”
Ms. Hermoso did not respond immediately to the remarks from Mr. Rubiales. Iker Casillas, a retired goalkeeper who played for the men’s…
