Jenni Hermoso – record goalscorer, serial swearer and an icon of Spanish sport

Ask anyone today who Jenni Hermoso is and their answer would probably sound something like this: she’s the Spanish player Luis Rubiales kissed without consent after Spain won the 2023 Women’s World Cup; the icon of ‘Se acabo’ — ‘It’s over’, the Spanish ‘Me too’ movement.

If the same question had been asked before Spain’s victory in that Women’s World Cup final against England, the answers would likely have been very different.

Now, sadly, she is intrinsically linked with that moment, and what happened after, and it has dominated the near 18 months of her life since. Today, Rubiales, the former president of Spain’s football federation (RFEF) will stand trial for alleged sexual assault and coercion, both of which he denies.

Hermoso, nobody should forget, is the top goalscorer in the history of the Spain women’s team with 57 goals, and her 123 appearances for the side are second, behind only Alexia Putellas.

Over the years, when asking defenders who was the most difficult opponent for them to face, they would always mention her, and if you asked her fellow forwards which player they admired, Hermoso’s name would come up a lot, too.

Whether it was at Barcelona, who she played for in seven seasons across two spells before leaving in 2022, or with Spain, for whom she won her 100th cap during that 2023 World Cup, Hermoso has always been known as the soul of the team, the one always cracking jokes. The now 34-year-old is the DJ in the dressing room, a music lover especially fond of the Spanish techno-rumba group Camela.

Hermoso got her love for football from a goalkeeper — her grandfather — but she always wanted to play close to the opponent’s box and has made scoring goals her trademark.

“Which player scores the most in training?,” Barcelona and now Spain goalkeeper Cata Coll was asked on the women’s football podcast El Patio in November 2020.

“Jennifer Hermoso. It’s always her,” Coll replied. “She’s the one who defines the best. No matter how much you want to guess her intentions, it’s impossible. In the end, she always changes her shot. I’ve given up.”

Hermoso was born on May 9, 1990, in Carabanchel, one of southern Madrid’s working-class neighbourhoods. Her roots explain her fighting character.

She has always had to fight — to overcome defences and also the obstacles that every female player of her generation encountered in Spain.

Before the events of the 2023 World Cup final trophy presentation and the scandal over Rubiales’ behaviour not just on that day but since, Hermoso was one of the most important faces of the professionalisation of the women’s game in her homeland.

That process was only completed in 2021, with an agreement between players and authorities that took 18 months to arrive and one that followed a players’ strike in which Hermoso took part.

Then in September 2022, she was one of three Spain players who appeared in front of the media to explain the mood of the national team camp. Soon after, 15 players removed themselves from Spain selection, citing concerns over attitudes and standards. Hermoso was not actually one of the 15 because she did not agree with the way the protest was handled, but she supported them.

She was not called up for months but returned the following February — a sign the rest of the players might do the same. She featured in six games between then and the World Cup that July and August — scoring twice in friendlies against Norway and Vietnam — and then played a key role the tournament in Australia and New Zealand.

Hermoso scored three goals at that World Cup and won the Silver Ball as the tournament’s second-best player, finishing behind her team-mate Aitana Bonmati. A missed penalty in the 69th minute of the final against England, with Spain 1-0 up, did not reflect her fine contribution to the women’s game in her homeland that summer or in the years before.

Hermoso made her senior debut for Atletico Madrid in 2004 at age 14, after two years in their youth programme. She was pushed by her grandfather, who had played for Atletico himself, but when she was little it was her father who first encouraged her to start playing. He was very keen on the game and wanted to pass on his love of the sport to his daughter.

The neighbourhood was her place of learning. She would go to the park, accompanied by her dad. He spent the most hours with her in Majadahonda — the north-western district where Atletico’s training ground is located — come rain or shine.

Hermoso always gets emotional when she talks about her family and the pride her grandfather felt when he reminded all his neighbours or announced in any bar that she was his granddaughter.

When she first played for Atletico, Hermoso replaced Ana Belen Fernandez, better known as Nervy, who she always said was her role model at a time when there were few or no female football icons. She also used to look up to Ronaldinho and Zinedine Zidane. Now, she is one of the benchmarks for the generations of footballers coming up in the women’s game.

Hermoso has had two spells with the two biggest clubs in Spanish women’s football: Atletico for eight years until 2010 and again in 2018-19, and Barcelona from 2013-17 and 2019-22.

She has been playing in Mexico for the past two and a half years, first with Pachuca in 2022 and 2023 and now with Tigres UANL since January 2024, and this is not her first experience abroad. At a time when the best Spanish women had to leave the country if they wanted to grow, she went to Sweden to join Tyreso for the 2013 season then spent the 2017-18 campaign in France at Paris Saint-Germain. There were also three seasons with another Madrid club, Rayo Vallecano, from 2010-13.

Hermoso has always been in demand at top clubs. She likes to play between the lines and provide the final pass, but during that initial spell at Barcelona, she also developed an eye for goal. As well as leading the way for Spain, Hermoso was the Catalans’ record scorer until October 2023 when Putellas surpassed her tally of 181 goals.

At the 2023 World Cup, she was one of Spain’s key players, showing her versatility by playing as a winger, as a centre-forward and in midfield across their seven matches.

When Putellas, the 2021 and 2022 Ballon d’Or winner who was handled carefully having recently only returned from a long-term knee injury, was not on the pitch during the tournament, Hermoso moved deeper to form a partnership with former Barca team-mate Bonmati in midfield. Otherwise, she was deployed as a striker. She was very useful for the team in both positions.

She always has a smile on her face and is one of those who can light up a dressing room, but her cheerful character can also turn if the situation requires it. She is never afraid to say what she thinks. She speaks spontaneously and isn’t one for platitudes.

“We’ve won a f***ing World Cup,” she said, in one of the most iconic lines from Spain’s post-final celebrations.

Hermoso was one of the players most moved by Spain becoming world champions, an unexpected triumph after everything that had happened with the squad in the build-up. Only three of the 15 players who had withdrawn from selection the previous year returned for the tournament and there were still tensions over head coach Jorge Vilda’s management style and the way the RFEF handled the dispute.

On August 25, 2023, five days after the final against England, when Rubiales refused to resign as RFEF president, Hermoso was one of 81 Spanish players who said they would “not return to the national team if the current leadership continues”.

During that World Cup, as Spain progressed past the group stage and on through the knockouts, Hermoso could not stop crying after each win. Her emotion was understandable. That year she turned 33 and, along with Putellas, Irene Paredes and Ivana Andres, she has played in every Women’s World Cup that Spain have qualified for (2015, 2019 and 2023).

“The age thing is just a f***ing number that people want to put on everything,” Hermoso said after the semi-final win over Sweden. “I don’t care about it. This is not a gift. I’ve worked hard for this.”

She was right. She started every one of Spain’s World Cup matches and played every minute — apart from being substituted late in the 5-1 demolition of Switzerland in the round of 16, after scoring the fifth goal — and was consistently among their best performers as she and her team-mates won the women’s game’s biggest prize.

But her crowning moment was overshadowed by the biggest controversy ever experienced by Spanish women’s football.

Rubiales eventually resigned on September 10, 2023, after being provisionally suspended by FIFA, world football’s governing body — which later gave him a three-year ban — and he will stand trial this week for alleged sexual assault and coercion of Hermoso. He maintains their kiss during the trophy presentation ceremony on the pitch in Sydney was consensual, while prosecutors will argue the opposite and that attempts were made after the incident to force Hermoso into agreeing with his version of events.

Vilda, the World Cup-winning head coach, Albert Luque, the former Spain sporting director, and Ruben Rivera, the former Spain marketing director, are also standing trial for coercion. They deny any wrongdoing.

In November, a Netflix documentary was released detailing the experience of Hermoso and her team-mates, at that World Cup and also during its aftermath, titled #SeAcabó: Diario de las Campeonas (It’s Over: The Kiss That Changed Spanish Football). It shows Hermoso explaining to Putellas and Paredes the pressures she faced and reveals the toll the saga took on her.

It also shows that Hermoso’s joking nature meant that, at first, her team-mates did not believe what had happened to her with Rubiales, thinking that she was kidding.

Hermoso took refuge back in Mexico after those events — although the process has proved devastating and exhausting. In July, she helped Tigres beat local rivals Monterrey to win the Campeon de Campeones, a match played between the winners of the first and second stages of the domestic league season.

She also helped Spain win the inaugural UEFA Women’s Nations League title last year, before a fresh controversy in November when Hermoso, Paredes and goalkeeper Misa Rodriguez were dropped from the national squad, despite being chosen as captains by their team-mates. Hermoso has not played for Spain since October.

“We have been dragging two years behind us, we need to build a team that the national team needs to perform,” Spain coach Montse Tome, who had been an assistant under Vilda, said. “I thought about which 24 players would give us what we wanted on the pitch and which 24 players would give us the balance in coexistence.”

Hermoso posted a message on her Instagram story responding to the decision that read, “Don’t sell your soul to the devil.”

Now she flies back to Madrid for a defining trial where she will be testifying on day one.

Once again, Hermoso is front and centre, and ready to fight her corner.

This article originally appeared in The Athletic.

Barcelona, Spain, Soccer, International Football, La Liga, UK Women’s Football

2025 The Athletic Media Company