Montse Tomé, the coach of the Spanish women’s football team, has renewed her contract until 2025, the Royal Spanish Football Federation (RFEF) announced on Monday. The extension of the contract for another year – which ends after the celebration of the European Championship in Switzerland next summer – comes just days before La Roja participates in Paris in the first Olympic Games in its history. “Pedro Rocha, president of the Royal Spanish Football Federation, and his board of directors ratify their confidence in a coach from the house,” the Federation stated on its website.
The coach (La Pola Siero, Asturias; 42 years old), who was a player in her time – she was in Oviedo, Levante and Barcelona and played four games with the senior team -, took over the position at the beginning of September 2023 after the dismissal of Jorge Vilda, who had been the coach from 2015 until then. The new coach became the first woman to manage the national team and the fourth person to occupy the dugout of Spain after Teodoro Nieto (1982-1988), Ignacio Quereda (1988-2015) and her predecessor.
For five years, Tomé was Vilda’s right-hand man. They met at the RFEF coaching school, and one day after finishing the course – taught by the former coach himself – he proposed to his former student to join his team. She accepted, but their relationship was completely fractured when Vilda sided with Luis Rubiales in the case of the kiss with Jenni Hermoso, which occurred at the celebration of the World Cup won by Spain in Sydney in August 2023. After the former coach of La Roja applauded the speech of the former president of the Federation in the assembly in which he repeated the phrase “I am not going to resign” five times, Tomé and the other nine members of the coaching staff resigned.
When she was appointed coach, not all the players approved the change – they saw it as a clear continuation of the trend. In the first call-up, she also left out Jenni Hermoso – she said she was doing it to protect her – and called up 15 players who had publicly expressed their refusal to play for Spain until changes were made in the RFEF – a private body that exercises a public function – to protect sportswomen and end the sexist culture that prevailed in the Federation.
Since then, Tomé – as an under-17 coach she was runner-up in two European Championships (2022 and 2023) and won the World Cup (2023) – managed to gradually straighten out the situation and achieved sporting results while the RFEF made some of the changes demanded by the footballers, such as the dismissal of officials close to Rubiales who were accused of harassing Jenni or the creation of a commission to turn to in times of crisis and the development of a protocol for action in cases of sexual violence.
The coach’s greatest success so far has been winning the Nations League last February after beating France in the final (2-0). It also earned her first qualification for the Olympic Games. Spain secured a ticket to the tournament when she beat the Netherlands in the semi-finals of the Nations League. In women’s football, the Games are one of the biggest challenges a footballer can face: the best countries and the most outstanding players go, and not a majority of athletes under 23, as happens in the men’s game, where these always coincide with major continental tournaments.
“The Federation bet on me. [Estoy] “I am grateful for the trust and eager to start competing. So far, the objectives have been achieved, they have been achieved well. We have a very good work group, an excellent group of players, and this makes things easier,” said Tomé in statements to the RFEF.
In the last call-up before the Olympic Games, the team led by Tomé managed to recover Patri Guijarro, one of the best midfielders in the world. The Barcelona player had not been called up to the Roja since September 2022, when she and 14 other players said they would no longer wear the Spanish shirt in protest at Vilda’s methodology. Guijarro – who this year won all possible titles with Barça: League, Champions, Cup and Super Cup – is one of the 18 athletes who will be in Paris this summer, but the team has two games before that appointment to close with a full victory the qualification – already sealed – for the European Championship: they face the Czech Republic on July 12 in Chomutov and face Belgium on the 16th in A Coruña.
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