Crucially, the documentary explores in granular detail the fallout between the federation and the national team which pre-dated the World Cup, when 15 players signed a letter demanding better working and coaching conditions following their disappointing campaign at the 2022 European Championship. The group, which became known as “Las 15”, refused to play for the team under former manager Jorge Vilda, who is described in the film as an average coach and control freak who attempted to strike fear into the players by entering their hotel rooms at night to talk with them.

Joanna Pardos, the director of the documentary, had been receptive to such issues long before the events of the World Cup final that overshadowed Spain’s victory. She was aware of the manipulation tactics Spain’s female players had suffered at the hands of the federation when she worked on a film two years earlier with Putellas, charting the career of the two-time Ballon d’Or winner. The pair had planned to do a big expose on the injustices she had faced under the federation once Putellas called time on her career.

“The Rubiales moment accelerated everything,” Pardos tells Telegraph Sport. “We didn’t have to wait until Alexia retired. In a way, the kiss was the moment that allowed the players who had been putting up with so much for all these years to begin telling their stories. They had been treated like dirt, pushed aside, silenced.”

Rubiales’s behaviour went far beyond the unwanted kiss that made global headlines. In the documentary, there is footage of him giving a cringeworthy speech to the Spanish team ahead of their World Cup semi-final against Sweden, when he asks players, “Who has more ovaries, us or them [the opposition]?” It was an incendiary reminder of how out of touch the federation was with women’s football. It also preceded Rubiales’s own crotch-grabbing antics – a gesture he said was to reflect his support of Vilda – as he stood next to members of the Spanish royal family in the stands after the final.

Backlash against increased visibility

Rubiales’s actions are indicative of wider sexism and misogyny in football. A recent Women in Football survey found that 89 per cent of women in the game had experienced discrimination in the workplace – that is up from 82 per cent in 2023.

Dr Stacey Pope, a professor in the department of sport and exercise at Durham University, has also shown that the “feminisation” or “opening up” of more opportunities for women to become fans in football over the past three decades has not automatically translated into greater gender equality.

Her recent research surveying 1,950 male UK football fans found that misogyny and sexist attitudes are commonplace, with 68 per cent of respondents displaying openly misogynistic attitudes. In echoes of the WRU contracts saga, men in this group saw women’s sport as inferior to men’s sport, particularly in relation to football. Men with progressive attitudes accounted for just a quarter of respondents.

“What we actually need to see is a gender revolution, everyone from players, managers, fans, sponsors, to take this clear and uncompromising stance against sexism and misogyny,” Dr Pope tells the podcast.

“It’s just incredible what we saw play out last year around the World Cup and thinking in the context of wider society as well and the #MeToo movement and raising public awareness of these issues, and yet we still find ourselves discussing this last male preserve, this last bastion of masculinity, this space where men can supposedly be real men in spite of the wider changes that we’re seeing in society.”