Jorge Vilda · Biography

Jorge Vilda Rodríguez (born 7 July 1981 in Madrid) is a Spanish football coach. His first major trophy came in 2010, when he won the Women’s Under-17 European Championship in charge of Spain. Thirteen years later he led the Spain women’s senior team to the world title. The son of coach Ángel Vilda, he has spent almost his entire career managing national teams, first in Spain and later in Morocco.

Early years

Vilda grew up in Madrid in a family steeped in football. His father, Ángel Vilda, worked as a fitness coach and manager and spent many years at the Royal Spanish Football Federation. Jorge played in the youth ranks of Madrid clubs, but knee injuries cut short his playing career at an early age. He qualified as a coach and joined the federation’s set-up towards the end of the 2000s, working with the women’s youth teams, an area that had few resources and drew little media attention at the time.

Youth national teams

As Spain’s under-17 coach he won the European Championship in that age group in 2010 and again in 2011, and in 2010 he guided the side to third place at the Under-17 World Cup in Trinidad and Tobago. He also managed the under-19 team, reaching several continental finals with it. A whole generation of players who would later form the core of the senior side came through his hands in those years. During that spell he settled on a style built around possession and pressing immediately after losing the ball, closely modelled on the federation’s men’s teams.

Spain head coach

In August 2015 he replaced Ignacio Quereda, who had led the women’s national team for 27 years and left after the players complained following the World Cup in Canada. Vilda also took on the role of sporting director for the federation’s women’s football. In 2017 he won the Algarve Cup, the senior team’s first trophy at an international tournament of that level, and that summer he took Spain to the quarter-finals of the European Championship in the Netherlands. At the 2019 World Cup in France the team got past the group stage for the first time and went out in the round of 16, beaten 2-1 by the United States.

“Las 15” and the 2023 World Cup

At Euro 2022 in England, Spain were knocked out in the quarter-finals by the hosts after extra time. In September of that year fifteen internationals sent emails to the federation declaring themselves unavailable and asking for changes to the coaching staff. The federation backed the head coach, and several of those players were not called up again. Vilda went to the 2023 World Cup in Australia and New Zealand with a reshaped squad that included three of them. On 20 August 2023, in Sydney, Spain beat England 1-0 thanks to an Olga Carmona goal in the 29th minute and were crowned world champions for the first time.

Dismissal and court case

The celebrations were overshadowed by the non-consensual kiss that federation president Luis Rubiales gave Jenni Hermoso during the medal ceremony. The crisis that followed reached the coaching staff, and on 5 September 2023 the federation sacked Vilda as head coach and sporting director; Montse Tomé took over the team. Spain’s National Court later tried him alongside Rubiales and two other officials over alleged coercion of Hermoso. In February 2025 the court acquitted him of that charge.

Morocco

In October 2023 the Royal Moroccan Football Federation appointed him head coach of its senior women’s team. Morocco hosted the 2024 Women’s Africa Cup of Nations, which was postponed to the summer of 2025, and Vilda took his side all the way to the final in Rabat. They led 2-0 at half-time but lost 3-2 to Nigeria. That runners-up finish matched the result Morocco had achieved at the 2022 edition. In October 2026 the Moroccan federation dismissed him as head coach.