Australian striker Anthony Carter has heard the age-old football adage that you never know who is watching, but even then he didn't expect there to be anyone of note when his club Trofense played Coimbroes in the third tier of Portuguese football last month. There appeared to be only a few hundred in the crowd, comprising mostly families, friends and junior players of Coimbroes where the only grandstand at the Silva Matos Park holds only 400 spectators and wasn't full that day.

However, sitting among those in the southern industrial suburbs of Porto was a scout of the country's largest club, Benfica, who watched Carter score two individual goals in Trofense's 4-1 win. They liked what they saw in the towering 23-year-old centre-forward, who had amassed a ratio of a goal in every other game over the last two seasons in Portugal, and quickly made a call to his agent and employers.

"I scored a couple of goals and that got me in the newspapers. After that I scored again and I got a call from my agent telling me Benfica was interested in me," Carter said. "I trust him a lot because he's the one who brought me here – we've got a very good relationship – but when he told me, I still didn't really take it in."

It wasn't the first time a club from the top division tried to sign Carter who was denied a chance to move to the top tier last January in the transfer window after Trofense slapped a high asking price for his services, valuing him at about $300,000. To some in Portugal, that was deemed a considerable fee for a relatively unknown Australia forward. However, Benfica had no hesitation in agreeing to their asking price for Carter, quickly concluding negotiations with Trofense before Christmas.