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I guess what I'm trying to say is, it's not really about the kiss and what's an appropriate punishment. It's more about the culture surrounding it and how it's dealt with that is highly problematic. The first instinct of the federation and of Rubiales is to lean on Hermoso to make a situation that Rubiales caused go away, and to try to guilt trip her and her friends and family into doing so (the coach apparently tried no less than three times on the plane trip). The second backup plan is to make the bare minimum apology, where the subtext is extremely loudly insisting that not only is the infraction so small, but also that people are just being jerks to insist on ruining the moment, and that his only true crime was being "too good at his job" or something. He likes to talk about the moment having "bad faith", but that's bad faith right there. At no point does Rubiales say something like "I made her uncomfortable", or talk about respect, or display any remorse. It's all "oops I guess I was caught". And then the Friday speech. Oh boy, the speech. It's throwing water onto a grease fire. I cannot understate how shocked I am that he's being applauded loudly by so many people in the room. At this point he has faced honestly very little actual repression. It's mostly online. People (rightly) think he's insincere.
But making such a fiery speech and claiming his own victimhood as more important and real than the victimhood of someone else, while behind the scenes him and his bureaucratic, domineering friends are the ones laying it on? Hypocrisy. He's the one that worsened the situation again further. The situation looks even worse for him if they did in fact fake the Monday quote from Hermoso (source here) which seems more likely than not. Hermoso herself and her family didn't seem to want it to be such a big deal based on Monday alone, or even during the week, refusing to be baited out by reporters on multiple occasions. Now of course the media might have been making things worse, but the only official action was FIFA beginning to look into it. It's important to note again that he's only actually suspended on Saturday, after he ignites the firestorm. I don't think that's a coincidence.
And of course the thing underlying it all: As Hermoso alludes to, and apparently a LOT of other players on the women's team believe, there were and are actual big issues going on behind the scenes in Spanish soccer that mean that it's not actually a given that Rubiales deserves to have his current job. The tip of the iceberg, as it were. In particular, there was a whole heavyhanded incident back in September where a group letter from 15 players resulted in the federation going public first and accusing the players of blackmail and trying to pull a coup on the coach, with bad feelings all around. For what it's worth, those tensions didn't appear to involve assault or anything like that.
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