The Royal Spanish Football Federation (RFEF) dismissed Jorge Vilda as women’s national soccer coach on Tuesday and announced that he will be replaced in office by Vilda’s assistant and, until now, second coach of the Spanish team, Montse Tomé.
Vilda, 42, has not been served at all by the currently suspended president of the RFEF, Luis Rubiales, offering him a four-year renewal and a large salary increase during the Extraordinary General Assembly on August 25.
Had he continued in his position as coach, Vilda’s salary would have tripled after winning the Women’s World Cup: from 160,000 or 170,000 euros gross per year that he previously earned to half a million euros per year, as Rubiales himself promised after announce his refusal to resign as president of the RFEF.
“I invite you to stay with us for the next four years, earning half a million euros a year. I am going to say what you earn, which is not the half million that some said, it is 160,000 or 170,000 euros, I don’t remember exactly,” Rubiales revealed in public and before television cameras. “You deserve it Jorge, we have been through a lot. You are the best coach in women’s football,” added the manager temporarily disqualified by FIFA.
Vilda did not sign the new contract promised by Rubiales, although the former coach does not waive financial compensation for his dismissal that, in some way, reflects the promise made by the former RFEF president.
According to the Madrid coach, Rubiales’ announcement about his renewal “was already in the Board of Directors” of the RFEF and the contract “was already perfected” because it had been communicated to him “after the World Cup and before the Assembly.” For this reason, Vilda has left the issue of settlement and compensation in the hands of her lawyers. “It’s no longer my issue, it’s my lawyers and the negotiation,” she said.
Jorge Vilda was sports director and women’s national coach since 2015, but he came to the RFEF in 2010 to take charge of the U-17 women’s team. With this selection he got two European Championships and a world runner-up, among other achievements. Three years later, in 2014, he replaced his father, Ángel Vilda, on the bench for the U-19 team. That same year he was nominated for FIFA Women’s Best World Coach. He had been working for the RFEF for 13 years.
Vilda believes that he has been dismissed “unfairly” and that the only explanation that the RFEF has given him is that it is due to “structural changes”, not “football criteria”. “I’m as good as can be after being world champions 16 days ago, being renewed 10 days ago for four more years with a higher remuneration, and after today being fired, I think unfairly,” Vilda said in an interview. in the program ‘El Larguero’ on Cadena SER.
The coach explained that he was informed of his dismissal after a “brief meeting” with Pedro Rocha, acting president of the RFEF, the general secretary and the vice president of Equality, and that it was due to “structural changes.” “After 17 years in women’s football, after everything I’ve achieved, leaving my skin as one more worker of the federation, and with a clear conscience because I have given one hundred percent, I have said that it is something that I cannot understood and that he did not see the dismissal as deserved,” he added.
Vilda was surprised because he “went with another idea” to this meeting. “You have the illusion for the good treatment that I have always received and because I saw myself with strength and desire to enjoy a League of Nations for the first time and be able to be in the Olympic Games. Being in Paris motivated me a lot as an athlete,” he confessed.
The former coach stressed that he has “congratulated” Montse Tomé for taking the reins of the national team. “It is deserved and she has the ability to do it very well. She was chosen by me for the coaching staff, she has challenges ahead. The greatest legacy that I have been able to leave is a recognizable style of play and a methodology, she has it to take advantage of it. She is ready and he’s going to do well,” he said.
Montse Tomé had been designated by Rubiales to be the next sports director of the women’s soccer team. Vilda was going to hand over the position of her sports director to the 41-year-old former Asturian soccer player. “You will stop being a sports director, Jorge, and I would like it to be Montse. She deserves a good contract,” said the now suspended president of the RFEF.