Verónica Boquete alleges Jenni Hermoso’s phone was hacked after kiss by football boss at World Cup

A former captain of Spain’s women’s national football team has described the weeks-long standoff over the fate of Luis Rubiales as a “war” that has pitted more than 100 of the country’s top female players against certain members of the Spanish football establishment.

In an interview published on Monday, Verónica Boquete even went so far as to claim that Jenni Hermoso’s phone had been hacked, which may have been an attempt to discredit Hermoso in the wake of the unsolicited kiss by Rubiales.

Irene Montero calls incident a ‘lower-intensity’ form of sexual violence as push to oust Spanish football chief Rubiales continues

Luis Rubiales’s unsolicited kissing of Jenni Hermoso is just one instance of the abuse suffered by millions of women around the world, Spain’s acting equality minister has said.

Irene Montero described the incident, in which the Spanish football president grabbed the player by the head and planted a kiss on her lips at the Women’s World Cup final medal ceremony, as a “lower-intensity” form of sexual violence that is often invisible and normalised in society.

Jenni Hermoso receives ovation at Madrid match as hashtag #SeAcabo is embraced on social media in wake of Rubiales scandal

When Jenni Hermoso arrived in the stands, the standing ovation was thundering. On the field below, Atlético de Madrid and AC Milan were battling it out for the Women’s Cup, but the message – scrawled on posters, temporary tattoos and a metres-long banner unfurled by the players – was unanimous at the stadium in Madrid on Saturday night: “We’re with you, Jenni Hermoso.”

It was a hint of how the tumultuous events of the past week since La Roja’s dazzling World Cup win have supercharged the long-running battle for equality in women’s football. As the hashtag #SeAcabó, meaning “it’s over”, was embraced from Sevilla to Santander, it was clear that Spanish football’s #MeToo moment had arrived.