“Protect me from what?”, Jenni Hermoso hits back at Spanish FA

The situation relating to the Spanish women’s team becomes more entrenched as the Pachuca striker replies to new coach Tormé.

Any sign of a quick resolution between players from the Spanish women’s team and the RFEF (Spanish Football Federation) seem to be growing ever remote after there was another twist in a bizarre day even by RFEF’s recent standards.

On Monday evening, new head coach Montse Tomé was officially unveiled along with her backroom staff, the 41-year-old then proceeded to name her squad for the World Cup winners forthcoming UEFA Nations League games against Sweden and Switzerland. The list included 20 players from the recent World Cup who had previously publicly stated that unless sweeping changes at the federation were forthcoming, they would not be available for selection. Tomé also ruled Jenni Hermoso out for what se claimed was an effort to ‘protect the player’.

At around 10:15pm local time on Monday (September 18), the players called up to the squad released a statement saying that “the players of the Spanish National Team want to show that, given the squad and subsequent press conference from the new head coach Montse Tomé, the following: what was said in our statement makes clear and with no option for interpretation our firm decision not to be called up for justified reasons. These affirmations continue to be valid.

We want to make it public that during the days following that statement, we did not transmit anything different to that to anyone at the RFEF, which is why we expressly ask for that all information given be accurate.

As elite professionals, and after everything that has happened today, we will study the possible legal consequences the RFEF expose us to given that we have been called up