Madrid (AFP) - Spain’s former football federation chief Luis Rubiales, who on Thursday was convicted of sexual assault and fined over his forcible kiss on the lips of star player Jenni Hermoso, is a combative personality whose career was marked by controversies.

The 47-year-old provoked worldwide outrage after he cupped Hermoso’s head and gave her an unsolicited kiss during the medal ceremony after Spain beat England to win the 2023 Women’s World Cup final in Sydney.

He was charged with sexual assault and coercion and prosecutors sought a prison term of two-and-a-half years for “Rubi”, as his friends affectionately call him.

Spain’s High Court found Rubiales guilty of sexual assault over the kiss and fined him 10,800 euros ($11,300) but acquitted him of the charge of coercion for having allegedly pressured the player to downplay the incident.

Rubiales, who had denied any wrongdoing and told the court he was “totally sure” Hermoso had consented to the kiss, stepped down as federation chief in September 2023, a position he had held for more than five years.

Born on Spain’s Canary Islands but raised in Motril on the country’s Mediterranean coast, Rubiales appeared for several lower-division teams before finishing his playing career in 2009 at Scotland’s Hamilton Academical.

“He was a modern defender, physically very strong. He liked to attack,” former Levante coach Manolo Preciado said of Rubiales, who played for the Valencia-based side between 2003 and 2008.

“He was always a model of dedication and loyalty with everyone.”

At Levante, Rubiales led a player revolt against unpaid wages, possibly inheriting a taste for public life from his father who served as the Socialist mayor of Motril in the mid-1990s.

The team went on strike and the players eventually received their wages, a success that likely encouraged him to fight for his fellow professionals by becoming head of Spanish players’ union AFE from 2010 to 2017.

Under his watch AFE called two national players’ strikes – in 2011 and 2015 – and oversaw the creation of a fund to cover unpaid salaries.

Rubiales, a divorced father of three girls, also persuaded La Liga to agree to pay AFE a percentage of its TV broadcast rights.

- ‘Not qualified’ -

His first clashes with the outspoken president of the Spanish league, Javier Tebas, began during this time, and they continued when Rubiales was elected president of the football federation in 2018.

Tebas once said he felt Rubiales was “not qualified” for the post.

When the Hermoso scandal broke, Tebas said Rubiales’ “misogynistic gestures” and “vulgar expressions” were “not a surprise”.

Shortly after he was elected, Rubiales sacked Spain’s men’s national coach Julen Lopetegui in a surprise move just two days before the start of the 2018 World Cup.

- ‘Falsehoods’ -

Re-elected president of the federation in 2020, Rubiales angered Spanish football traditionalists by expanding Spain’s Super Cup contest, turning the traditional meeting of the league champions and Copa del Rey winners into a four-team format.

He also faced a huge backlash for signing a lucrative deal to play the competition in Saudi Arabia, which is frequently accused of human rights abuses.

In 2022 Spanish media published leaked audio recordings from 2019 that suggested a company called Kosmos owned by former Barcelona defender Gerard Pique made millions of euros in commissions over the deal to relocate the Super Cup to Saudi Arabia.

Rubiales dismissed the allegations as “falsehoods” but prosecutors are investigating.

At the same time Rubiales won praise for boosting the number of sponsors of the federation and its revenues, and improving the conditions of lower-tier teams, which won the support of regional football federations.

“He has achieved a sea-change. He put a 19th-century institution in the 21st century,” the president of the football federation in the northeastern region of Aragon, Oscar Fle, told sports radio Marca in 2022.

Rubiales tripled the budget for women’s football to 406 million euros ($422 million) in 2022 but sided with the national women’s team coach Jorge Vilda when 15 internationals backed by Hermoso staged a mutiny over the manager’s methods.

The bet paid off as Spain won the Women’s World Cup but Rubiales’s actions as Hermoso went up to collect her medal for that victory led to his spectacular fall from grace.