Jose Luis Rubiales got lost on the FIFA ball.
Photo: IMAGO/ZUMA Press/Jose Breton
In 1966, the playwright Peter Hacks wrote the fable “The Bear at the Forester’s Ball,” in which a bear dresses up as a forester and causes a lot of trouble at a party with other men. He drinks too much, he is simple and cheeky, not with an ulterior motive, but because he is simple and cheeky. And it is precisely this riotous attitude that leads the foresters to think the bear is their boss. They follow him blindly and so the bear gets more and more colorful because no one contradicts him, because the bear is simply the baddest of the foresters and the atmosphere is so nice. In the end, the bear’s wife, of all people, comes and crashes the party with the sentence: “Blimey, what kind of company you hang around in.” The bear didn’t understand anything and replied: “It’s a shame you came so early… Never mind. Other times are also days.”
What if Hacks was already referring to official football with his fable? It’s always been the same: men pat themselves on the back for being who they are. And they can’t do anything about it, because no one comes and tells them until someone comes and tells them, but even then it’s still difficult to understand what the problem is, because too many people keep saying that it is no problem.
Luis Rubiales, the bear on the Fifa ball, has now realized that there is a problem and is stepping down as Spanish football association president. Three weeks ago, when Spain’s soccer players had just won the World Cup final, Rubiales kissed Jenni Hermoso on the mouth against her will at the award ceremony. This caused a storm of indignation around the world that Rubiales did not want to understand. And because he is a real bear, the problem is of course not his exaggerated ego, his machismo, his intrusiveness and shamelessness, but rather it is the pressure that is on him, because after all Spain wants to host the 2030 World Cup together with Portugal and Morocco . Unfortunately, the “situation,” as he calls the sexual assault of Jennifer Hermoso in a television interview that will be broadcast in its entirety this week, somehow got out of hand and it would be “selfish not to resign now.”
Hacks knew over 60 years ago that in the end it would be women who would crash the men’s party because they would expose it for what it has always been: an occupational therapy for men who would otherwise find it difficult to integrate into society would be.
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