Arkaitz won a few races on the national calendar and did alright I thought. His weakness is not in his day-to-day recovery but in his stage-length recovery. His best performance is always in shorter races and shorter stages. Weirdly, his best races last year were when he wasn't representing Efapel (Asturias, in the Spanish national selection). His 2012 showed he more than merited another chance to give it a go as a pro, and I see no problem in Efapel giving him a ride. And he was the only non-Portuguese on the team, it wasn't like OFM who are technically a new team and promptly spent most of their budget on Spanish imports (and Marque, who is Spanish but has spent his whole career in Portugal until Movistar signed him in September). Now, if you want to contend that Durán was a bit selfish in the Volta, then I have no qualms with that, Efapel really were too strong for their own good because they didn't have a clear leader going in the way the super strong Palmeiras team of a few years ago did, where Blanco was clearly the leader and Victorino, Cardoso and Mestre were domestiquing for him. Rui Sousa is not strong enough to command that kind of loyalty like Blanco did, because you had at least four guys on the team who had every right to consider themselves worthy of leading a team at that Volta, even if they might have needed to go to a weaker team to do so. Rui Sousa, Nuno Ribeiro, Hernâni Brôco and Arkaitz Durán are all strong enough, in the right form, to lead a team (just possibly not THAT one). I thought Sérgio Sousa might have been as well, but seemingly not. Both Durán and Ribeiro kind of pulled for themselves, and in the end Brôco and Sousa were clearly the stronger duo. Making Brôco domestique for Rui Sousa is depressing. And as you said, Joni Brandão was strong especially early in the race and deserved more freedom (although his bonehead move on Danail Petrov on Santa Luzia may have cost him a bit in that respect) and Vilela was also very good.
The squad has now been well and truly gutted after the failure that was their Volta (I don't know what was more depressing, that they thought staking everything on Rui Sousa was a winning strategy, or that they were nearly right). Sousa's gone to Radio Popular and taken Cesar Fonte with him, while Durán's taken Marque's old roster spot at OFM, and Ribeiro and Vilela have also made the jump to Valongo. I guess they'll be working for Gustavo César next year. On rider strength they ought to be, but there's another 30+ Spanish import leading a Portuguese team. Efapel, to be fair, have brought Mestre back to lead the team, and they've picked up Rafael Silva from LA too, although they'll already have more estrangeiros than 2013, because they've signed Garikoitz Bravo and Carlos Oyarzún. Radio Popular have jettisoned most of their estrangeiros, but they're banking on Rui Sousa, which is hardly a step up on their previous hopes being pinned on João Cabreira.
Although in fairness, Cabreira's national kit for Onda was seriously sweet.
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