Dear Editor,
I cannot help feeling that the “outrage” expressed in the UK over the potential hiring by a new club of convicted rapist footballer Ched Evans could never happen in Portugal.
It’s not just because here football is more important than anything (even rape!), it is that here prison/the threat of it/ the stigma of conviction or having been found wrongdoing just does not seem the same.
We have, after all, the apparently corrupt boss of a bank that went under and will cost the country millions if not billions, still swanning about in a chauffeur driven car and living in a Cascais mansion despite the fact that he is on €3 million bail! How much longer will that go on, I wonder?!
And then we have that other worrying character, the former politician wanted for murder in Brazil, convicted to 10 years in prison for fraud, and still smartly dressed and hobnobbing it, albeit discreetly, in great comfort!
No one seems to be complaining about them or making their lives a misery. That’s why I feel saddened for this footballer in UK. I have no idea of the details of his case. I know only that he is appealing against his conviction, that he served two-and-a-half years in jail and wants to return to the only thing he knows: football.
If he was Portuguese, what’s the betting that he would already be highly-prized by a club and out scoring goals?
Name and address withheld
