What happened to Portugal?

Ler em Português

A regular in international competitions since 2008, Portugal will not be taking part in the 2023 World Hockey Championship. Initially scheduled to take part in the 2020 World Cup, the Portuguese  are no longer there. Three years on and with funding to buy the  plane tickets (previously achieved in 2020), why aren’t the Portuguese taking part at the most important  hockey competition?
Since underwater hockey arrived in Portugal in 2008, only twice the national team has not taken part in an international competition. That was in 2016, at the Worlds in South Africa, and in 2017 for the Euro . Those two times, the national federation did not want to send any team at those international events.
This year therefore marks a third absence, in a context where we don’t understand the reasons and where it seems difficult to imagine Portugal not taking part in  worlds. Three years had passed since the original date of the World Cup, the players in the squad were motivated to take part in the competition, but there was no news from the federation.

No Portuguese championship since 2021, a condition set by the authorities for the possibility of having a team at the World Cup. UWHnews has obtained documents showing that tickets for the trip to Gold Coast, before the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, had already been paid for. We’re talking about 10,000 euros from sponsorship found by the players.

In an other document in our possession, we can also confirm that this sum has been claimed by the Portuguese federation, which has never bem used to the national team or given back to the sponsor. Joao José, former CMAS uwh director,is the actual Portuguese Underwater Activities President. We will see what will happen.

Contacted by our redaction, the Portuguese federation did not wish to respond to our enquiries. The future of Portuguese  hockey remains to be seen. A future championship? A return of the national team?