Spanish football struggles to bid farewell to its legends: from Verónica Boquete to Jenni Hermoso.

“We miss Jenni Hermoso, we miss Jenni Hermoso,” chanted a small but loud section of the stands at Butarque during halftime of the match between the Spanish women’s national football team and Japan last Friday, which ended with a victory for the world champions (3-1), ahead of the Euro Cup starting this Wednesday. They shouted this at Montse Tomé, the national coach, as she approached the tunnel leading to the locker rooms. The Asturian woman looked down, impassive, and continued on her way.

On October 25, 2024, Jenni Hermoso played what would presumably be her last match for the national team. She entered the field for María Méndez and played the final fifteen minutes. No one knew they might be witnessing the last moments of the all-time top scorer for the national team: 57 goals in 123 matches.

The last match for Verónica Boquete with Spain was on March 1, 2017, in the Algarve Cup (Portugal), against Japan. The national team won 2-1, and the Galician entered the field in the 65th minute, replacing Sonia Bermúdez. No one knew they might be watching the last minutes on the field with their country for the first female footballer to put Spain on the map of women’s football competitions.

For different reasons, but with similarities in their paths, both left the national team quietly. Now, eight years later, the Royal Spanish Football Federation (RFEF) has resumed contact with Verónica Boquete, while Jenni Hermoso has stopped being called up. Gradually, football fans, and she herself, began to accept the absence of the number 10 from the national team. But a farewell that could have been gradual, as happens with so many athletes moving through stages, ended up opening a wound. Another.

Hermoso’s departure has been attempted to be explained with various arguments. After the World Cup, Montsé Tomé opted not to call her “to protect her” from the media storm she faced after the Rubiales case — the forward received a kiss on the lips from the RFEF president while collecting her medal as world champion in Sydney. When she returned, nothing was the same. Her prominence in the national team diminished, and the Madrid player eventually faded from the national team’s plans. Montse Tomé cited “sporting reasons” for her decision to exclude her after the Games and amid the scandal surrounding the trial against Luis Rubiales — who was convicted of sexual assault and coercion of Hermoso —; additionally, the coach conveyed a message bearing her name: “I know what I like about players both on and off the field, what I like to see, that camaraderie, that presence.” Cadena Ser revealed that Tomé wasn’t pleased with Hermoso’s behavior as a substitute during the Paris 2024 Games.

The figure of the Madrid player entered public conversation so abruptly that everyone has opined about what appears to be her definitive departure from the national team at the age of 35. Because it is impossible to exclude from the narrative the Rubiales case.

The RFEF seeks to make amends with Verónica Boquete

When women’s football had a nearly residual media and social presence, Verónica Boquete put it on the map. First, she took on the challenge and achieved the most improbable dream: to live off football. She traveled to the United States, Russia, Sweden, Germany, France, China, and Italy. She was the first Spanish female footballer to win a Champions League: with Frankfurt, in 2015. She was a classic number 10, with style and a privileged vision of the game. The second thing she did was to stand up to Ignacio Quereda, the second coach in the history of the national team. She led protests against him after the debacle in Canada, the first women’s World Cup in Spanish football history: Spain was eliminated in the group stage, and the poor conditions in which the players trained were exposed.

Boquete paid a high price for this: she never returned to the national team. They never called her again. Rather than shrinking in the face of adversity, over the years she has become one of the most authoritative and courageous voices to speak about the abuses endured by Spanish female footballers for decades.

Now, the Federation is trying to mend fences with her. On April 8, when Spain played against Portugal in Balaídos, Rafael Louzán, the president of the RFEF, met with her and presented her with a national team jersey with her name and the number nine. A few months later, they had another gesture by involving her in the video where Montse Tomé revealed the list of players called up for the Euro Cup. The video begins by recalling the goal scored by the Galician international against Scotland in 2012 that secured Spain’s ticket to the Euro 2013.