My name is Gabriella, and I am a sports journalist. When I heard that the coach of the Spanish women’s Olympic soccer team had been fired for having sex with one of the players, it sounded like just another case of a powerful man abusing his position for sexual gratification.
But when I read an interview with the player at the heart of the matter, I sensed there was something different about this case. Something unusual.
I asked my editor to let me look into it. He granted me permission to seek interviews with both Irene. M and Pascual. D, the coach. When my interviewees had agreed on terms, I set off for Paris from my base in Barcelona.
*
“Hi, Irene. Thanks for meeting me.”
“You’re welcome.”
“Pascual. D, your coach for the Paris Olympics, was fired for sexual activity with a player, and you voluntarily came forward to confirm rumours in the press that it was with you. Can I ask why?”
“Yes. I don’t want people to think I was a victim, or that he was a predator.”
“Some people might wonder why he was fired, if that’s the case?”
“He occupied a position of authority and trust over me. If he’d quit or cut me from the team, there wouldn’t have been an issue. But he couldn’t cut me from the team for no reason, and he has a wife and kids at home to support.”
Irene told me about her journey through football academies to the big leagues, and how she had first been called up for the national side.
“I’m curious as to how the encounter between you came about, if you don’t mind?”
“Well, it wasn’t exactly over a romantic dinner with a five-piece orchestra, if that’s what you mean! I flirted with him sometimes. We all did. He’s quite hot. You know, sporty, rich, confident. It was in the locker room. It was after practice. We were sitting on the benches discussing the game. I was still in my Spain kit. He told me I looked beautiful in the red silk. I said thanks.
He leaned over and kissed me. I didn’t object. We made out for a good ten minutes. Then he kissed my neck. And things just…happened.”
I took in what she had told me so far, leaned over and tapped my phone to stop the recording.
“How much detail can you give me…off the record?!”
Irene laughed.
“You lay on the bench to do it?”
“No! He took my hand and had me stand up. He had me turn to face the wall. I pulled my shorts down…there were no knickers to take off at the time. I bent over and stepped smartly with my feet so that…the target area was…clearly available. Then, I braced myself on the wall with my right hand and reached between my legs with the left. I fingered the folds of my pussy, massaging my clit as he was getting a condom on. I hadn’t had sex for months so I was good and ready quickly.
He grasped the hem of my shirt as he began to fuck me. There’s a detail I didn’t really think much about at the time, with all that was on between my legs, but I later realised was strange. He pulled my top right down so it almost covered my bottom. I rocked back and forwards on his penis and, the funny thing was, he never really touched my flesh. He held onto my soccer shirt the whole time.”
“He didn’t touch your bottom? Or put his hand under your shirt?”
“No. He was very hard, though. It felt good. We were being naughty, so that helped as well…”
As Irene spoke, I looked her over discreetly. She was wearing a tracksuit that hung loose around her body so that her breasts were not conspicuous. She had a short brown ponytail and her (frankly, rather plain) face was not made up. There was something oddly sexless about her, as if her identity as a footballer had so subsumed human desire as to leave no trace. It was hard to imagine her being taken spontaneously from behind in the changing rooms.
“...I remember thinking, I’ll never hang my shirt on this coat peg without thinking of this day! After about five minutes, he gave me a series of about six hard thrusts. He got real deep and, as he was pulling back, I felt him cum inside me. He’d orgasmed on the brink of pulling out.”
“If you don’t mind me asking, did you come?”
“Absolutely! It was a great sexual experience. I was happy for the rest of the day! One of the other girls said she came harder than ever before with him.”
My ears pricked up at this.
“The other girls? You’re not the only one on the team he’s been with?”
“Oh, no! He’s had sex with at least three of us. I can’t speak for them, but if you write to them, they might be willing to talk.”
“One more question, if I may. Was it a one-off occasion?”
“Yes. Some world we live in, huh? Ten minutes of fun up against the wall, and he’s unemployed and I’m a scarlet woman.”
“Irene, you are anything but. Thank you for your time.”
*
I sent out emails to the other women on the team. I mentioned that I had spoken to Irene. All but one went unanswered. María. T told me she’d be willing to share her story, but only by email. I agreed, and her story (which is presented here proofread but unedited) popped into my inbox three days later. As I read the story, I opened a photograph of Maria. T and had it sit in a window on my laptop next to her writing.
She had brown eyes, which were accentuated by very pale white skin. Her eyebrows were trimmed. She had quite a sharp nose; not huge, but pointed. Her hair was blonde and she had dark roots. The football shirt she was wearing accentuated her breasts. Maria had lovely, brace-straightened teeth and wore light pink lipstick that tastefully matched the Spanish soccer shirt she had on.
I found that having her image looking out from the screen as I read her words helped me keep the human involved in the story more real in my head. Maria wrote;
“My story begins when I was first called up to the national team. I was two months post-breakup, having been in a relationship since I was seventeen…nearly four years! So, you can imagine, I was not in the best of places.
When I arrived at the training camp, I was so nervous! I know some girls take being selected for Spain in their stride. Possibly they know other players from their club, but I didn’t. I was the only one from Gimnastic there!
Coach Pascual was a force of nature. He was always at the camp, from dawn until dusk. He practically lived there. He took everyone, individually, under his wing. He made you feel like you were the most important person on the team. And not in a creepy uncle kind of way. He had a real passion and enthusiasm for the job. I remember he gave us a speech in the locker room about bringing glory to the nation through football and how proud he was to coach us. There were tears in his eyes.
And, inevitably, some of us began to have feelings for him. He led gym sessions, pumping weights and flexing his muscles, encouraging us and supporting us.
One day, I was running in training and I felt a sharp pain in the back of my calf. I fell down in a heap. My hamstring had gone! I knew at once it was the end of my chance to play for Spain, at least for the time being. I was in tears as they helped me walk off.
Coach Pascuale was so nice. He sat with me in the treatment room. He sent me whatsapp messages all the time, checking I was ok and making me laugh. I just thought we were flirting. I didn’t know about the other girls. It was then that I started to fantasise about him.
I had a dream one night. In the dream, I woke up next to the coach. I was naked and so was he. His body was so hot. Muscular, well hung. I’d never felt safer. I’d never felt more loved. I was on my side. He wrapped his arms around my body as he entered me from behind. He was so gentle…I woke up aroused, desperate for sex.
I called my ex-boyfriend. He came straight round. He whipped his cock out and gave it to me good. We did it for hours, really heated stuff. And I admit it; when I was on my knees, taking it from behind, all I could think of was wishing it was Coach Pasquale.
It was a week after the dream that I brought Pasquale back to my place. I wanted sex. I wasn’t really worried about the politics of it. He was married, so he wouldn’t be phoning the tabloids. I had no illusions about everlasting love between us. It was just lust.
Now, I won’t give you a blow-by-blow account of the sex, so to speak, but I want to share something because it chimes with what Irene told you. He stripped naked quickly. He threw all his clothes aside. Coach Pasquale has an amazing body. His legs are always on the go, so they are rigidly muscular. His upper body is as you’d expect, for a man who has made a career of fitness and coaching.
I…gave him some foreplay with my kit still on. Then, when his cock was hard, I pulled down my soccer shorts. Like Irene, I didn’t wear panties at training. I was wet enough to slide down his cock easily. And I rode him, cowgirl style.
And now we come to the strange part. I moved on his cock so that it reached where I wanted it. It felt good. I complimented him on how hard his erection was. He looked up at me. He smiled. The eye contact as he moved inside me was hot.
Now, being naked is part of the fun of sex, right? His upper torso looked nice. I wanted to touch him more…fully.
I thought it would be nice to press our flesh together. I assumed he’d enjoy seeing my breasts and, for my part, I knew it would feel nice if he touched them.
So, mid-sexual encounter, I naturally reached down and took the hem of my soccer shirt in my hands, with a mind to pull it off.
And, to my surprise, he reached up to stop me! My team shirt had barely cleared my belly button when he reached up and grabbed my hand, and guided it back downwards.
“Keep it on,” he whispered, “You look great in it!”
I was certainly surprised. Not all the guys I’d been with had been equally attentive to my breasts, but all of them had at least wanted to touch them. But Pasquale showed no interest at all. It was like the shirt was sexier than my body!
From that point on, I slightly lost interest, to be honest. We both enjoyed the fun at waist level, but, for me, it was just too non-intimate…”
*
He pulled Irene’s shirt down over her bare bottom, but he still didn’t touch her flesh.
He was offered an open invitation to touch Maria’s upper body. She wanted him to do it, but he still refused.
He even pulled her Spain soccer shirt down rather than have her expose her breasts and stomach.
This was unusual, there was no doubt about it.
It was time to speak to Coach Pasquale.
*
He invited me to his house for the interview. I accepted, having heard no suggestion that he had behaved improperly towards women and knowing that he had a wife and children at home. As I entered his driveway, I couldn’t help but glance at his car. There were mini Spanish flags hanging on the sun visors and a toy bull wearing a Spanish top perched on the driver’s dashboard. Making a mental note of this, I hurried up the driveway to knock on the door.
The coach himself opened the door. He was beaming and considerably larger than I’d pictured him based on the photos I’d seen. He must have looked less imposing when photographed alongside the players, who were themselves above average height.
“Welcome! Welcome! Come in!” he cried, shaking my hand vigorously.
“Thanks!” I said, stepping over the threshold.
“We’ll talk in the garden, it’s a beautiful day. Can I fix you a drink?”
“Sure. Soft drink, please, I’m working.”
“Yes, of course.”
I followed him through the entrance hall and down a short passage to the kitchen, which I could see opened up onto the garden. The passageway was decorated with framed newspaper articles about his team’s successes.
“Actually, before we sit down, why don’t I show you around a little?”
I readily agreed. We went upstairs. On each side of the stairs, a Spanish flag was hung.
“Kids bedrooms, our bedroom and this…” he pushed open the door with something like reverence, “is my study.”
A big trophy cabinet dominated the left side of the room. His desk faced the window, and hanging above it was a portrait of the King and Queen of Spain. The right side of the room was hung with Spanish soccer shirts, mostly of the national team but a couple from Madrid and Barcelona.
“My little collection,” he said, barely containing his excitement. “That’s Raul’s from the 1996 European Cup final. This was Guardiola’s debut. And this is Iniesta’s shirt from the World Cup final.”
“The one when he scored the winning goal?”
“Yes! The piece de resistance!”
“It’s a…very impressive collection!” I said admiringly. Although this was true, it did leave me wondering how big a space was left for his wife and children, after the pressures of his job with the national side.
We went out to the garden, which was set up with two mini-goals. After the initial pleasantries and establishing of background and context, we got to the heart of the story.
“It’s no secret that you are married, and yet you’ve admitted having sex with several of the players on the team. There must have been tensions at home?”
As I spoke of his infidelities, his smile never wavered, nor did his gaze.
“Not a bit of it,” he said without skipping a beat, “My wife knows all about my dalliances. It’s all above board, I can promise you that!”
“So, it’s an open marriage? Your wife also…?”
“No,” he said, shaking his head.
Perhaps I had been wrong. Perhaps it WAS just another abuse of power case. The coach took a long draught of his drink and, for the first time, looked away from me. After a brief pause, he spoke again.
“It’s a little hard to explain. Gabriella, would you describe yourself as patriotic?”
I was rather thrown by the question. I honestly hadn’t thought about it before.
“Sure, I guess.”
“In my eyes, you are not a patriot. To me, a patriot could not conceive of spending their life in any way other than in service to her country. And you journalists, you mock and sneer and criticise our glorious past. You make us feel guilty for who we are and you…”
“I write about football! I don’t do any of those things.”
He lurched forward at this, and now there was a passion in his voice that might have frightened me if I had been of a more timid disposition.
“But you do it without any fire in your veins, Gabriella. You write about my team as if it were a Sunday league soccer side, not the representatives of the greatest country in human history.
That is how I love my country. I love Spain differently from the way I love my wife. For me, the nation is indivisible from my real, flesh and blood heart. You want to know why I fuck those girls?
The footballers serve as a proxy for the greatest passion of my life. My country.”
“As a proxy?”
“Yes.” And he lapsed into silence.
“So, if I understand you correctly, you were in essence not having sex with Maria or Irene at all. You were making love to Spain?”
He nodded.
I was lost for words. Never had any conversation I could remember taken such a bizarre turn. It did explain his lack of interest in undressing the women. I supposed it explained, in a sense, his wife’s acceptance of his affairs. But…
“You don’t understand,” he said quietly.
I shook my head.
“I don’t blame you,” he said, “I realise it’s unusual.”
I couldn’t think of a question. I simply didn’t know what to say.
“Gabriella, the only way you will understand is if you experience what Irene and Maria did. I’m going to go upstairs to my bedroom now. In the study, folded in the drawers of the desk, is a soccer kit.
If it’s not for you, fair enough. No hard feelings. You can let yourself out, go home and write what you please. But if you want to understand, you should change into that kit and join me. If you walk up the stairs, think of the flag. Think of what it means. Think of the generations of Spaniards that came before us whose legacy we have inherited. This is your chance to embody your heritage, Gabriella.”
Pasquale got up and left me alone.
They say that curiosity killed the cat. The situation was so unusual, so bizarre, that I felt a burning need to see it all the way through. I did feel in control. That was important. I didn’t, not even for a moment, feel I was in any danger.
As if in a dream, I walked up the stairs. I brushed my fingers along the Spanish flags, thinking to myself how little thought I had given to my own feelings about my country. Was I a patriot? I’d honestly never asked the question. The bedroom door was closed. I went into the study, looking around me at the photos and trophies. I found the folded-up football kit. I stripped naked, hanging my clothes on the chair. I put on the kit. Taking a deep breath, I stepped out and knocked on the bedroom door.
“Enter!” he called out. I did. He was sitting up on the bed, wearing a dressing gown.
“You look beautiful!” he said approvingly. I blushed.
“Don’t be scared. I won’t hurt you. Just come and lie down on the bed with me.”
I obeyed, my heart pounding. When I was next to him, the coach undid his dressing gown and slipped out of it. As expected, he was naked beneath it. He ran his left index finger down my shirt, from the collar, straight between my breasts and then he pressed it gently into my navel. His cock was getting hard, and I reached over to grasp it. Then, he leant over and kissed me on the lips.
“Beautiful Spain,” he murmured, as if to himself, “How good it feels to kiss you again.”
I kissed him back, letting my body grow used to his presence and ready for sex. His cock was hardening in my hand as I squeezed and shook it. He had a nice body, I had to admit. He was a sight for sore eyes. He slipped his hand beneath me, rubbing my buttock through my shorts for a while as we kissed. My nipples were hard now. In fact, my body felt a good deal warmer and I was starting to feel hot beneath my clothes. I wanted them off, but restrained myself from asking. I wanted to see what he would do.
The coach now slipped his hand up my shorts and I felt my genitals being touched, his fingers stroking my pussy with practiced skill and a sensuous lightness of touch.
“That feels nice!” I murmured to him. He squeezed one of my breasts through the shirt, then resumed kissing me again, my clitoris being stroked all the while.
His eyes were on me, looking up and down my body. He might not have wanted me naked, but what he was seeing was clearly affecting him.
“I’m going to put a condom on,” he told me, “Take one from the drawer and unwrap it.”
I complied, his fingers still stroking between my legs. He had very slightly increased the speed of his stroke now, and I was wet.
“Put the condom on,” he told me. I unwrapped it and carefully rolled it down his penis. Maria had been right: when this man got hard, he got REALLY hard. That thing was like an adamantine Egyptian obelisk. We kissed again. The tenderness with which he kissed me, the anticipation of the sex and the stroking beneath my shorts was seriously turning me on. He kept up the foreplay for a long, long time…I was practically coming when he pulled his fingers out and whispered, “Pull your shorts down to your knees.”
I complied. He was on me in a heartbeat, thrusting my legs apart and squirrelling his cock into me. From the first second, it felt fantastic.
I knew I was going to come, and come hard, but I didn’t want to forget that I was, in a sense, on the job. I was the first woman in history who was aware she was being screwed by a man with a fetish for his country, not her. What was it like?
My journalistic training battled with my animal lust in my mind. I looked into his eyes. I had heard that, when having sex with a psychopath, their eyes show no warmth or affection, but are a cold and empty void. This was not the case with the coach. Instead, his face had assumed a dreamy, far-off expression, as if he were at prayer or had gone to sleep in the middle of the act.
“You’ve given me everything,” he said quietly, “Accept this from me.”
He was asking me to come. I closed my eyes and surrendered. It was as if he knew my body perfectly. He moved inside me at exactly the right speed, wielding his cock at exactly the right angle. My nipples were so hard that they were chafing against the polyester shirt…
My muscles spasmed suddenly. I threw my legs up in the air as the joy of orgasm mushroomed within my body. I vaguely remember crying out, but my brain was in another place entirely.
I had come, but he wasn’t done and neither was I. I’d awoken from my brain fog to see his face, still about a foot above me. He was smiling now; But that smile vanished when I tried to pull my shirt off. I reached for the bottom of my shirt and pulled it up to the edge of my breasts; It was partly instinctive. I wanted the full experience and, yes, that included wanting to display my goods. I also wanted to know how he would react.
“Please, don’t. I can’t do it with you, Gabriella,” he said. He sounded genuinely concerned. “Believe it or not, I love my wife. I want to respect her. She’d never forgive me. Just accept it for what it is. Pull your shirt down, please.”
I can’t do it with you, Gabriella? His cock was literally inside me as he said that.
This was getting really weird I thought, pulling my shirt back down to cover my belly. But my body was doing its best to take my mind off the strange situation. I felt fantastic. In fact, if I relaxed and didn’t overthink the madness, I could actually…
The second time I came, I arched my neck back and let it flood through me. My legs shook in the air and I grasped his bare hips tightly, caressing his muscular flesh and feeling them move rhythmically as he pumped his cock in and out.
He was speeding up. He was getting ready to come.
“Oh, Viva Espana! Viva Espana! Visca! Visca! Dios…!”
Coach Pasquale gripped my biceps as he came inside me. I felt the weight of his body on top of mine. When he had calmed down and pulled out, we lay side by side for a while. I pulled up my shorts and got up to pee.
“Don’t come back in here,” he said as I left the bedroom.
I dressed myself alone in the study. I showed myself out and went out into the cool, early evening air. I walked down the street, my legs slightly shaky after the vigorous sexual intercourse.
Was Pasquale’s obsession with his national identity unhealthy? Or should it be welcomed in the uni-culture of today’s globalised world? Was it degrading for a woman to be essentially used as a symbol of a nation, rather than be made love to as an individual human being? Or did his evident concern for her sexual pleasure override those concerns?
I never regretted my encounter with Coach Pasquale, but I won’t pretend I ever understood it. I tried reevaluating my thoughts about Spain, to perhaps become a better patriot. But his words never chimed with me.
Later, I fell in love and married. However erotic and passionate the sex I had with my life partner was, I never once closed my eyes and thought of Spain. Perhaps I was missing out on something. Or, maybe, it was coach Pasquale who had been led astray.
