The former head of Spain’s football federation was pelted with eggs thrown by his own uncle as he released a memoir detailing his fall from grace after kissing a female player.
Luis Rubiales was forced to quickly spin away to avoid at least two of the eggs, with one splattering on a screen nearby.
Mr Rubiales told reporters: “A man entered, who I later saw was my uncle, who is a troubled man, and always has been.
“He had some eggs and threw some at me, but I didn’t know what he had in his hands, and when I first saw him I thought he might be carrying a weapon.”
When targeted, he was launching his book, Matar A Rubiales (Killing Rubiales) – a 500-page account of his professional demise.
The ex-boss’s woes began when he kissed Spanish forward Jenni Hermoso, the team’s captain, during the 2023 Women’s World Cup awards ceremony after she and her teammates had won the tournament.
Video footage of the incident, in which Mr Rubiales grabs her head and kisses her on the lips, sparked outrage.
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Ms Hermoso insisted she had not given permission for the kiss and that Mr Rubiales had “stained one of the happiest days” of her life and “disrespected” her.
Mr Rubiales has always denied he kissed Ms Hermoso without her consent.
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He eventually stepped down under immense pressure from the government, football officials, women players and fans.
Earlier this year, he was found guilty of sexual assault for the unsolicited kiss by a Spanish court, fined €10,800 (£9,206) and banned from going within 200m of Ms Hermoso or contacting her for one year.
He later lost an appeal against the conviction. The court said he had managed to restrain himself when interacting with other players and “could also have done so, without too much effort, with the captain”.
In Matar A Rubiales, according to its publisher, the former football federation boss claims to have been the victim of a “conspiracy of different powers of Spanish public life”, including the government and “the profitable world of feminism”.
