Like (RFEF), Rafael Louzán staged the unity of Spanish football this Thursday with the appointment of its first board of directors. It includes as vice presidents Javier Tebas, president of LaLiga; Beatriz Álvarez, president of LaLiga F, and David Aganzo, president, of the footballers’ union (AFE). The triptych of these vice presidencies is one more step in the reestablishment of the relations of the RFEF with three groups with which it waged a total war under the presidency of Luis Rubiales.
The first to approach positions with LaLiga was the disqualified Pedro Rocha, despite the fact that Tebas went so far as to say that he was not the best candidate to preside over the RFEF and whom he even described as a “vase”. Now it has been Louzán, whom Rocha chose as his successor, who has extended the bridges with these federative vice presidencies for employers’ paths and the majority union. Tebas will be the sole representative of the clubs on the RFEF board, leaving out Real Madrid, Barcelona, Athletic or Atlético de Madrid. This is not the first time that a LaLiga president has held a federation vice presidency. Villar already did it with Pedro Tomás and José Luis Astiazarán, although it was more out of institutional courtesy than because of the weight they had. Tebas, by history, will be more active, although it shares a board with territorial presidents such as Jacinto Alonso (Rioja), José Miguel Monje Carrillo (Murcia) or Joan Soteras (Catalonia), all part of the hard core of the Federation that he baptized as “the house of horrors.” The absence of Medina Cantalejo, president of the Technical Referee Committee, is striking in the new RFEF board. It remains to be seen if this decision corresponds to the fact that Louzán needed to eliminate two former managers, to reach 50% equality between men and women, or is it the first step towards the outsourcing of Premier League-style refereeing.
After all the scandals that have shaken the Federation in recent years, both Tebas and Beatriz Álvarez and the position on the federation board knowing that Louzán is waiting for the Supreme Court to address his appeal against the sentenced to seven years of disqualification from holding public office for violating the subsidy for the remodeling of a soccer field in Moraña. The events occurred when Louzán presided over the Pontevedra Provincial Council for the PP.
The conviction no longer represented any impediment for 90 assembly members to elect the Galician baron as their new president on December 16. Everyone, with their votes, public support or being part of its board, assumes the risk that the federative institution and Spanish football will be the protagonist of another international embarrassment if the Supreme Court ratifies Louzán’s conviction. This is also on alert to try to disable you. Sources from the organization chaired by José Manuel Rodríguez Uribes stated categorically a month ago that they would file a complaint with the Sports Administrative Court (TAD) if Louzán acceded to the seat of Spanish football for non-compliance with the federative statutes in their articles 19.4 and 24.
🔴 The president of the RFEF, Rafael Louzán, brings together his Board of Directors for the first time, with representation from LaLiga, Liga F, AFE, footballers, coaches, clubs, the refereeing establishment and all the territories of Spain.
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— RFEF (@rfef)
The first of them establishes as a condition for holding positions in the Federation “not being disqualified from holding public positions.” Article 24 has to do with the cessation of positions for any person affected by the restrictions of 19. Louzán defends that his sentence is not yet final, although the federal statutory regulations do not require it. The Galician leader also alleges that the ministerial order that regulates elections in sports federations, promoted when he was Minister of Culture and Sports, is higher in rank than the federative statutes and does establish that the sentence is final.
The battle between the CSD and Louzán is currently won by the latter, who has made a couple of strategic appointments in case the CSD now disqualifies him or the Supreme Court does not exonerate him. The Galician lawyer Beatriz Seijo, who participated in a legal report distributed among the territorial barons related to Louzán and in which it is recommended to change the federative statutes, precisely in the articles that play against the new president, has been included in the board of directors. . This newspaper asked Louzán and the RFEF yesterday if the appointment of Beatriz Seijo has to do with the aim of changing the statutory regulations, but did not receive a response.
The other appointment is that of Sergio Merchán from Extremadura as first vice president. To this one, Rocha’s dolphin, Louzán gave 25 endorsements so that he could stand in the elections in case the CSD denounced him due to ineligibility. The CSD’s legal services studied it, but doubted whether the organization had legitimacy. Once Louzán was elected, the Minister of Education, Vocational Training and Sports, Pilar Alegría, cautiously announced that the CSD would “study the steps to take when the established 48 hours” for challenging the electoral results were completed. Eight days after the aforementioned deadline expired and despite the harsh public reluctance that both the minister and the Secretary of State have made against Louzán’s presidency, the CSD still has not made a move. Government sources assure that the agency’s legal services continue to analyze reports.
Both Alegría and Rodríguez Uribes have already seen how the Commission for Normalization and Representation of the RFEF, announced with great fanfare by both and chaired by Vicente del Bosque, failed in the Euro Cup when Rocha was the one who sat in the noble seats of German stadiums. The hackneyed phrase of the federative liars that says that “football is governed by football” is imposed again under Louzán’s presidency.
