José Manuel Constantino has outlined his views on the official website of the COP, deploring the lack of response by the Prime Minister, António Costa, in an open letter from the sports sector, in which he has expressed dissatisfaction at the absence of policies that would minimise the effects of the pandemic on the national sporting situation.

“This is bad. He has manifested a lack of respect for sports agents and operators”, stressed the COP president, recalling that the prime minister has responded “to an open letter from the culture sector, which expressed its dissatisfaction with the fact that the Recovery and Resilience Plan (PRR)” but has failed to address the sporting sector.

For José Manuel Constantino, “this duality of criteria, this option of paying attention to some and ignoring others, helps to explain much of what is happening in the way sport is treated on the political agenda”.

In this sense, the president of the Olympic body claims that António Costa has “never showed any special cultural sensitivity towards sport, always fulfilling the minimum services resulting from public responsibilities exercised”.

The COP leader reiterated that, “globally, the Government has ignored sport and has no cultural and political dimension about its social importance”, pointing out some exceptions: “Those manifestations of patriotism when some international sporting success of our athletes occupies the media space and the use of the usual rhetoric about the virtues of sport ”.