Paredes asked for Vilda's dismissal: the August 2022 whatsapps

The messages between Paredes and Rubiales that contradict the captains

Did the players of the Spanish national team ask for Jorge Vilda's dismissal or did they merely convey "concerns"? The question had gone unanswered for a year and now 13 messages have come into play. The messaging conversation between the then captain, Irene Paredes, and the former president of the Royal Spanish Football Federation, Luis Rubiales, published in October 2023 by EL ESPAÑOL, places the request in August 2022, a year before the World Cup.

Rubiales put it in writing without mincing words: "Players don't sack coaches, it's harmful". Paredes insisted there was "a serious problem in the dressing room, one that goes back a long time". Two accounts that ended up sharing training camps, a World Cup and a press conference.

What the 13 messages between Paredes and Rubiales say

On 2 August 2022 Irene Paredes wrote to Rubiales to ask for a conversation. The president accepted and promised to call her after a meeting he had under way. The call became a video call with the three captains —Paredes, Alexia Putellas and Patri Guijarro— and several federation officials present. In it, the players conveyed the need for a change of coach. Rubiales was blunt: "The coach will stay on". There was no negotiation.

On 14 August Paredes wrote again. Rubiales's reply, a long message, opens with "I am utterly astonished". He recalls his days as a player, says he never questioned a coach "in front of anyone, least of all in front of the president", and claims he had never experienced players calling the president "to sack a coach". He defends Vilda and notes that he had received offers, some "even higher financially". He closes with a harsh sentence: "It is a breach of football's values, it is disloyal and, moreover, it is playing with people's livelihood and way of earning a living".

The messages are in the hands of several members of the National Women's Football Committee, according to the published information. The leak is therefore an internal matter as much as a journalistic one: someone on the inside decided those conversations should come to light just as the case of the kiss to Jenni Hermoso had the federation on the ropes.

The three reasons the captains gave for dismissing Vilda

Three arguments were put on the table in the video call. The first, that "the coach's message wasn't getting through to the dressing room". The second, a "weariness" with a sporting project that had "been the same for a long time". The third, the most uncomfortable: disagreement with "the roles" the coach had assigned to certain players, who in their view should be playing fewer minutes. In other words, some team-mates pointing the finger at others in front of the federation.

The National Women's Football Committee described the move as "blackmail". Paredes replied that all they wanted was to "train, play and win", that the problem went back a long way and that they had tried to cover it up, and that the team had "lost confidence, sporting-wise". The word dismissal did not appear in her message.

From 22 September to the resignation of 'Las 15'

With no change in the dugout, on 22 September 2022 fifteen players resigned from the national team by email. The confrontation dragged on until the World Cup and blew up afterwards, with Rubiales's kiss to Jenni Hermoso, an episode that ended up in the hands of the courts and over which the former president testified before a judge. As of the publication date of the messages, that matter was still before the courts.

At the press conference before the match against Sweden, Paredes and Putellas stated that they had "never" asked for "the dismissal of a coach, we were only conveying concerns". The published messages point in another direction. The discrepancy is no small matter: on it depends whether the story of the rebellion was a sporting complaint or an operation to force the coach out.

Who pays the price when the federation gives in

There is an economic reading of the episode. According to it, Rubiales was the one who boosted women's football: he multiplied by six the national team's budget and granted it the same services and travel as the men's team, even when the women's section did not generate them. The conclusion drawn is an old management lesson: the executive who gives in to one side ends up devoured by it.

The argument, however, does not explain why a bigger budget translates into less authority, nor why the conflict erupted a year before the World Cup and not after. Nor does it clarify how much of that standoff was sporting and how much was an internal power struggle within a dressing room with very marked hierarchies.

The background noise about the players' education

Much of the public conversation drifted towards generalities about women's sport, with comparisons about education and professionalism. It has been pointed out that most Spanish internationals have university degrees, unlike what happens in the men's national team, and that this did not prevent the conflict from being handled by messaging and email.

The captain said she would have had that conversation "regardless of the result". The result, a year later, was 13 messages in other people's hands and a press conference that no longer squares with what was written.