I'd actually be surprised if he doesn't get a look in, personally. Not saying he's the next Wynton, but he's getting decent minutes and exposure in a league that's miles above the Handy - and still better than the A-League (Ok, to third of the ladder maybe, but still).
Also, he's probably close to his mid-20s so if he was unwilling to commit in the hope the USA might call him, he'd probably reconsider.
According to Wiki he's been capped 6 times for NZ, but I'm not sure any of those were competitive matches and he's actually cap-tied?
Not the biggest Portuguese football fan out there but I'd like to think I'm pretty knowledgeable on rankings like this - definitely right that there is a huge discrepancy between the big three and the rest, but any Primeira Liga team would absolutely wipe the floor with us. Even Sydney would fight against relegation. It's the tiers below that are really trash however.
Tondela on paper is the weakest squad in the league probably, they would be a lower-level Championship side for context :)
When I had this debate before in the Boyd thread I went and watched highlights of a bunch of random games from there and they looked slow and lacking skill. A lot of random errors. Compared to the Championship it appeared to be significantly lower quality. I'd say these mid league games were the equivalent of the bottom rung of A League games. Sydney look way better than anything I saw.
Attendances are terrible. Players from there don't regularly break into better leagues unless they were with one of the big 3. Likewise, fading stars or experienced top level players don't drop down to it either. It all adds up to not very good.
Here's the first highlights I could find for a Guimaraes game that didn't involve the big 3.
And here's the first Tondela game:
Sure there are some nice passes and moments of skill but there's also a lot of basic errors, poor touches, flat footed defending and so on. I don't see anything to suggest that the best team in the A League would struggle in this competition.
The attendances are truly shark I completely agree, but that's because almost every non-big 3 team are from tiny towns (<50000) where the team isn't big. Aves is from a town of 8000 for example, Moreirense come from a town of around 4800. Almost everyone in Portugal supports a big 3 team, the smaller clubs to a lot of people are insignificant. (as an aside, there's a team called Nieciecza in the Polish top tier from a town of 750 - just found that out and it's pretty damn astonishing)
I work for EA as a player reviewer and managing editor, mostly for Wellington Phoenix and New Zealand international teams, but it also requires me to keep a keen eye on world leagues. FIFA itself is a very good measure of quality between leagues: here are the ratings of the Portuguese teams according to the database (the number on the left hand column is the overall quality), and here are the ratings of the A-League clubs. These ratings take into account the quality of player at the club, and though not completely accurate (Roar and Jets, jesus) they do show a large discrepancy. Maybe I was a bit harsh in saying Sydney would struggle against relegation considering their squad, but it's hard to see any other A-League club surviving comfortably, especially us. And to be honest, I'd take watching that Rio Ave game over a Roar vs Nix slog anyday lol, our highlights are SO much worse
Even the smaller teams have some quality transfers in - the team you showed, Rio Ave, had Jan Oblak and Brazilian international Fabinho two or three seasons ago. Guimaraes have one of the best U21 wingers in the world in Raphinha, as well as quite a few Portuguese internationals. I’d say that all first XI players in the league would make our first team
Those teams also have a crapton of depth due to no salary cap, zero foreigner/visa limit and a better pool of players to choose from compared to Aus/NZ, so while Sydney might have Mierzejewski and Ninkovic, Guimaraes might have a whole team of Mierzejewskis and Ninkovices
