Transfer talk, fee payments, mega salaries and managers being fired. No, not the Premier League but Remco Evenepoel and Red Bull this summer. Pro cycling is increasingly taking on some aspects of soccer’s top flight because it is attracting ever larger sums of money.
Contract, schmontract. Remco Evenepoel had a deal to ride for Soudal-Quickstep next season but he’s moving. This is the paradox of long contracts where the longer the deal, the more likely it gets broken. It’s a new environment where top riders at least get these long term deals compared to the old norm of one or two year contracts.
The deal happened because Red Bull is paying Soudal-Quickstep a fee in compensation to release Evenepoel. This is said to be north of three million Euros. The going rate these days seems to be the rider’s annual contract and so a double saving for the Belgian squad as they won’t be paying Evenepoel next season and they’ll collect a multi-million sum instead. Where they deploy these resources will be interesting too; but will Soudal and Quick-Step stay without their national hero?
One big difference compared to football is the size of the rider market. Yes soccer has more money sloshing around but the point here is the size in terms of buyers and sellers, it’s only among the World Tour and Pro Conti levels we’re talking about so the market is reduced and in reality a handful of teams. It’s partly why the World Tour sees fewer transfer fees a year than Liverpool FC or Bayern Munich might make in a week.
Another similarity is the sacking of a manager after poor results. Rolf Aldag has left the team and so has Enrico Gasparotto with the talk that the Italian paid the price for a lacklustre Tour de France because if Florian Lipowitz made the podium in Paris they didn’t get much else: the sponsor is demanding more. It’s not the first sacking for performance, not this year even with Matt White leaving Jayco.
Pro teams have been owned by their manager, Marc Madiot or Jonathan Vaughters would not sack themselves. However increasingly teams are now owned by corporates, Groupama-FDJ is a joint venture owned by the sponsors, EF is owned by EF these days and depending methodology half the World Teams are owned by their sponsors rather than the traditional model (actually since the late 1980s) of being service providers renting out naming rights and space on the jersey to partners. This corporate ownership suggests teams might be more brittle, if a company decides it is done with the sport that’s its business. However in practice we’ve seen corporate owners quite keen to pass on their asset to another, see Decathlon buying equity from Ag2r, more recently Lidl taking over from Trek.
Back to managers and we’re far from football’s managerial merry-go-round. Perhaps one or two teams do need a shake-up but sponsors are also alert to the fact that their budget is the prime determinant, not the team car driver.
Pay has been soaring too in the peloton. We’re not at football levels, nor even the practice of knowing the pay which is commonly reported in football but only estimated or leaked in cycling. Evenepoel is reported to be on a deal of around €6 million a year with bonuses that could take him to €8 million. This is a Tour de France contender’s salary which brings us to the pressure and expectation that will fall on him. Obvious footballers face pressure too but cycling’s concept as an individual sport practised by teams puts a burden on Evenepoel. At this rate he is practically obliged to target the Tour de France and the GC too, no whimsical stage-hunting.
Evenepoel is a willing partner to this, and not just to collect the salary each month. He wants to win the Tour and give himself every advantage; at one point he said out loud on French TV during the Tour de France that Soudal-Quickstep could not match others for GC support. Even knowing he was far from his best this summer after a disrupted winter and a broken rib from the Belgian championships, it’s hard to see where the gains come in the mountains to take on Tadej Pogačar and Jonas Vingegaard next July. It’ll be interesting to see, but also to observe from how he and his new team handle the pressure.
This post is Evenepoel-related but Red Bull did something similar to hire Roglič two years ago and haven’t got much to show for it; it’s said he’s helped the team professionalise in many ways but there might be cheaper ways to attain this. So continuing the football theme it’ll be interesting to see if Red Bull look like Paris Saint-Germain, the French team known for its colossal wage bill… but little silverware.
Another similarity is the establishment of youth teams and precocious recruitment. Some riders are being scouted by cycling teams at the age of 14 and while cycling’s rules mean they can’t be signed, they can be nurtured and brought onside by pro teams and then placed in junior teams once they’re a couple of years older.
Conclusion
Riders moving before their contracts are up, multi-million transfer fees and managers getting fired. It is a bit more like football. It’s not pro cycling copying another sport for the sake of it, instead it’s testimony to the sums of money involved now and the urgency this brings. Red Bull didn’t want to wait another year, they’ve paid millions to hire Evenepoel now. You can bet the combined World Tour team budgets for next year will see double-digit inflation on this year’s record spend.
So far the sport seems to be managing this, the rulebook is based on the contractual system of old but hasn’t failed in transfers yet. But this is probably more down to consensus between teams; so far we’ve see little litigation or dirty tricks. Which rider will move next in a big deal?
Evenepoel is a great rider no doubt. But paying an oversized salary is the opposite of moneyball. For the moment it does not seem reasonable given his past to assume he can challenge the top 2 tdf riders or the best one day racers on a consistent basis.
But he probably does bring a lot of publicity and the sponsor may be willing to pay extra for that. Perhaps in a year at a different team environment he may unlock new form and this move will look inspired.
I,m not sure about Roglic and another high flyer on the same team. It might be best for all if he is allowed to go to another team. This years tdf highlighted that from the outside at least he does not always seem to be focused on team duties.
My impression about Roglic:
He was sick in the leadout to the Tour and knew he wasn’t going to perform well, but went partly because his sponsors wanted him to. He mostly rode sensibly, but made it clear he didn’t feel up to much pressure to get a top result, which given his preperation he knew he likely wouldn’t get. And he knew Remco was coming, so likely his last Tour. He can still be a favourite for a Grand Tour next year with proper preparation, if neither Pogacar nor Vingegaard are at the race.
@Brent. Evenepoel will bring Classics and Monument wins as well as the sponsors. Not so much on the GC front while the Pog and Vinny show is still on the road, beyond stage wins.
In which monument is Remco going to beat Pogacar?
The Classica San Sebastián 😉
The ones Pog doesn’t ride?
Perhaps next year his helmet will be gold plated … possibly with wings!
I like Evenepoel and wish him every success. It can’t be easy carrying such a heavy weight of expectations at a young age, especially with his history of accidents/injuries. Hopefully, he’ll avoid the “Curse of Quickstep” that seems to plague the performance of Quickstep riders who move on to new teams!
I don’t see anything unusual or troubling about Remco going to Red Bull. First, he’s getting a nice raise. That’s a huge factor when your career can end any day, racing or training.
Second, it doesn’t seem that Soudal-Quickstep ever fully transformed into a GC team. And I’m not blaming them. They have a special history in the one-day races and probably some resource constraints. It looks like they did their best to support Remco. But Red Bull can apparently do a bit more. Another plus for Remco.
Sure Red Bull has other guys who can climb, but they’d better! Otherwise they wouldn’t be much of a GC team.
I just hope Remco can stay healthy long enough to realize more of his potential. He has had three major injuries and he’s still only 25 years old. Tadej has had none. Jonas had one. Primoz is widely praised for his toughness, and rightly so. But Remco has shown quite a bit of toughness also.
I’ll second that. I think Remco has still some potential to progress: he has had major injuries and he’s going to a better team for GTs. As well, he still has to improve his handing skills and the way he rides in a peloton: if you look at the 1st stages of the last TDF, you see how he significantly takes more wind than Pogaçar. Every details count…
Will this be enough to win a TDF to the 2 others aliens? Not sure, he faces an exceptionally strong generation (a bit like Gimondi with Merckx). But the other aliens may not be there each year. And even if I tend to agree he is not best suited for GCs, with the palmares he has already (worlds, LBL, Olympics, Vuelta), the next target should be the Tour.
Sure Remco can win TT’s until the cows come home,but the Tour …? Not so sure. Can RedBull/Bora turn Remco into Big Mig ? Well that opens up another bunch of questions!
QS might well end up getting the better part of the Remco deal.
That’s an issue, as he’s not being paid as some kind of “Super Ganna” to win TTs, wear the leader’s jersey in a grand tour for bit and pick off a Monument in the spring – as exceptional as this still might be, but delivering this is maybe a €2.5m deal – but his contract is superior to Vingegaard and the team and especially the sponsor HQ will want results.
€6m: that’s an awful lot for a rider who will always be GC second favourite – at best – if Pogacar or Vingegaard are present, not to mention up and comers such as Del Toro… and, as IR opines, that’s a very expensive TT victory.
Also, if he’s getting so much, sure fire winners such as Pedersen will be looking to enhance current contracts while future stars like Brennan will be asking “what about me?”
Evenepoel’s contract also makes S Yates recruitment to Visma-LAB and his Giro win look a snatch.
The gap between the haves and have-nots is sadly continuing to widen. It’s not healthy that UAE have Pogacar, Ayuso, Del Toro, Yates, McNulty, Almeida…
@ INRNG He’s not currently even the number 1 GC rider in his own team – does that mean Lipo will be banging on the DS’ door demanding £7m plus bonuses? It’s also likely that he’ll be overtaken by the young guns, especially as he can’t seem to eradicate the bad day or two in the high mountains.
The sponsor will want results, which begs the question what results would do. A one week stage race, a monument, some Tour stages or will Remco be forever sent to the Vuelta (as some sort of penance for his large salary)? At the moment he is struggling to get onto the third spot on the Tour podium, so as they say on Wall Street, Red Bull have maybe made the beginner’s mistake of “buying at the top” (see Sylvan Adams as another example).
If Remco thought he was under pressure to perform at QS, then things will go up a notch or two now. I hope he’s mentally prepared for it.
No one cares about Vuelta. But considering the ubiquitous Red Bull marketing, perhaps they just want a star/panache rider who would represent the brand – and a good story occupying the media is worth more than just a good result. Evenepoel has the persona of Olympic champion and you can reasonably expect him to get the attention worthy of the biggest star of the peloton. Whether he’s able to bring the appropriate results is perhaps rather unimportant.
Welcome back Mr. Ring, hope you had a nice post-Tour holiday!
As for Remco and Red Bull, I think it’s a bigger gamble than many consider it to be. Put me in the column of those who think he is an extremely talented but limited rider. I just don’t see him ever competing for the final yellow jersey, unless something extraordinary happens to remove the riders who he has never really threatened so far. On the other hand, he gets lots of attention and has the ability to win lots of stages in a variety of settings, so he’s definitely marketable. I wouldn’t be sad to be proven wrong, but I just see two older riders who are much better gc threats and many younger riders who look like they might overtake Remco in the grand tours. Will be fascinating to see if his new team really goes all-in for him, and if they do, for how long.
Given how much money they have put on the table for Remco, his new team will have to go all-in for him next year at the Tour. It is certainly a gamble given how much better Vingegaard and Pogacar are in most people’s opinion. And as you say, with Pogacar only 26 and Vingegaard only 28, it isn’t likely they will decline in the next two-or-three years. After that, there will be new riders on the horizon ready to challenge Remco as the best-of-the-rest.
That’s exactly what I meant about how long Remco will get the full support of the team. If he doesn’t podium the 2026 Tour, what happens then? He certainly can, but it’s hardly guaranteed.
Evenepoel is an amazing rider, but I’ll predict right now that he’ll never win a Tour de France. I don’t think grand tours are his strength. If that’s why Red Bull hired him, they will be disappointed. However, they’ll surely get a lot of marketing value from him overall.
On a general note, I want to express my gratitude to our host for the amazing bike racing coverage throughout the year. This is the only cycling blog I read and the in-depth coverage and even-handed analysis are unmatched. I also appreciate the thoughtful and knowledgeable comments. Thank you!
I second that!
Welcome back IR and thank you for all
I thought Red Bull would turn their focus to Lipowitz and forget Remco after the results he got this year. He is just raising the bar every time he races. I would spend the money on getting a DS who can control these guys instead. Because it seems like they are just headless chickens at the most crucial times.
A German rider on a German team, it’ll be interesting to see what happens next. The obvious thing is Lipowitz goes to the Giro next year “for experience” which he needs but come 2027 it’s easy to see the team having two leaders at the Tour and things getting spicy.
There’s also a mini congestion problem like UAE with the likes of Hindley and if he can get over long term injury issues, Vlasov too with claims to GC leadership.
These are luxury problems to have but still require planning and management as much as at the other end of the scale Intermarché has to get a merger done or Cofidis needs to plan for life outside the World Tour.
Lipowitz could win the Giro with the right lineup. He has ability, but above all he believes in himself and has the hunger
Evenepoel seems to need a Visma like team that really nurses him. And he needs a designated rider to keep him up front in the bunch. And a mountain train to keep him fresh, or limit losses. I just don’t see him getting that at the Red Bull team we know now.
But who knows how Red Bull will look with all the heads that have already rolled. It could work. But again, it could also be a total disaster if they just send him to the tour with Roglic and Lipowitz.
There are three Grand Tours each year. I am sure they can split them between Evenepoel, Roglic and Lipowitz. They won’t send all three to the Tour.
As well as Vlasov, has Martinez also been injured or ill this season? He’s another rider who at his best should be a GC contender for the team but I feel like this season he’s been almost invisible, save for a few shots of him being dropped far earlier than he previously would have been.
Red Bull or formerly Bora Hans Grohe have not been great nurturing German riders, plenty of examples: When Pascal Ackermann was the fastest sprinter around, they never took him to the Tour. Max Schachmann had a dreadful few years at the team and rejuvenates at Quickstep at the moment, Kämna same story, not even to mention Pollitt (despite his stage win at the Tour..). So maybe Lipo would be better off looking somewhere else, but surely has a contract..
Ackermann moved on but did he get better? Schachmann wasn’t so bad, his Paris-Nice wins are almost the exception to the rule of riders leaving Quick-Step and faring worse… but the Paris-Nice wins and not much more.
Pro Cycling Stats has Lipowitz contracted to Red Bull for next season but not after that so, assuming that’s accurate, if things don’t work out in the team next season he’d be able to move. I imagine there would be no shortage of teams happy to sign him.
I don’t understand why Roglič’s balance sheet at Red Bull is often portrayed fairly negatively, and again in this post. Since joining them, he has won 11 races, all at WorldTour level, including the GC of three major stage races. I doubt the team would have achieved anything like this without him. If you can’t sign Pogačar, Vingegaard or (back then) Evenepoel and want to maximise your chances of winning a GT, recruiting Roglič looks like a sensible approach to me. I agree that there has been a drop in his performance this year, but overall I feel he has delivered what can be expected from a top rider who isn’t getting younger and faces competition from some of the best riders the sport has ever seen.
He’s got results, but it’s more the spend from Red Bull with the fee to get him out of the contract and his subsequent salary, he (and his agent) have probably got the better side of the deal than the team.
It’s said that the team pays over the odds, something the team manager Denk has denied and he says it’s the reverse, that they can recruit below the market because riders want to come to the team… but it’s hard to see who he has in mind.
If we believe that salaries should be a fair reflection of achievements, then I understand this view. His salary is probably on the higher side of what one would expect from someone who has delivered those results in the past (not quite) two years. However, salaries are a matter of supply and demand, and therefore I think they shouldn’t be the primary criterion when measuring whether a signing was a success. Red Bull clearly had sufficent cash and wanted to maximise their chances of quick GC success (especially at a GT). Roglič was their best bet of achieving this, and he has duly delivered. Given how often big signings go wrong, this is quite remarkable IMO. That’s why I believe that both sides will be fairly satisfied with how things have worked out. The only thing that was really missing was a more marketable demeanour at this year’s TdF.
As for Denk’s claim, I find that hard to believe. Red Bull has not only recruited extremely expensive riders, but they have also recently lost some riders who claimed that there was a questionable team culture. So I’d be surprised if there was any queue of riders prepared to join them for a meagre pay.
They have some young talent but seem to be stock in win now mode rather than setting themselves up for the future. And I’m not sure winning now is a possibility.
I feel that this year, Roglic got injured in the Giro (for which, lets not forget, he was the favourite). And then went to the Tour without being properly prepared (still recovering from his injuries).
Red-Bull can be disappointed with his Tour performance over the two years he has been there. But otherwise, I think, Roglic has mostly delivered. And it isn’t yet clear if he has actually declined to the point he can no longer win a Giro/Vuelta without the aliens: we won’t know that until next year.
Yes, unless I’m forgetting somethine Roglic’s Vuelta win last season was only the second Grand Tour the team has ever won. It feels to me like that alone should have made his transfer worthwhile for the team, even if this season hasn’t worked out ideally for him. No one else in the team has had such a high level overall GC win since Hindley’s 2022 Giro.
All fine and dandy. Except he didn’t sign and wasn’t signed to win 11 races and a GT. He signed to give himself the best chance of winning the Tour de France and Red Bull were fully on board with that and paid him accordingly. In that way, it was unlikely to be a great signing, especially for the money, and hasn’t been one. Moneyball it aint and, arguably, both the team and the sponsor have had more out of Lipowitz and his podium at this year’s TdF – in absolute terms as well as relative ones – than they have out of two years of Roglic.
All fine and dandy, but we all know there has been nobody capable of challenging Pog and Vin for the top spot on the TdF podium for the past few years. I can understand that neither Red Bull nor Roglic will want to tone down the ambitions they voice, but I can’t believe they don’t know this. Why else would they have started him in the Giro this year? If he hadn’t been ill he’d have had a good chance of winning that, and in the current landscape, that’s a great achievement.
Previous blogs this year had comments bemoaning the broken state of cycling and it’s business model. Well, perhaps. But no one has told Red Bull, Lidl or Decathlon. Money is still flowing at the top.
Talk of Remco not being on par with Pog or Vingegaard somewhat misses the point, no? Of course he’s not when they’re at their peak right now. But that duopoly won’t last forever and not at every race. Remco is a good bet for giving value even at those wages. I hope he can compete for podiums at GTs while still hoovering up TTs, rainbow jerseys and other prestige races.
Welcome back IR. My F5 key seems to have worn down. Some advance Warning or a hiatus would be welcome!!
The blog has a working RSS-feed, so you can use that.
if Gasparotto was in a french team with a podium placing in the Tour, he would have been a goddamn national hero and would not have to pay for a beer ever again so that was a weird firing if the criteria was a result at the Tour as it was as good as they were going to get with 3rd place and a white jersey when Roglic were riding for holiday in the alps…. but i suppose that’s the Red Bull Standard. 1st place or get out the door.
So it would be interesting how they deal with Remco because I dont think he will ever win the tour echoing from what many have said in this comment section. Sure it’s the best option available on the market even if they have to overpay it. (A guy who has never won the Tour got paid more than the one who did it twice – sure he won a lot more than Jonas in all kind of races plus the double olympic titles sure as hell raises his leverage.) If he wasn’t able to handle pressure before, he better get that skill up quicker than his VAM because it’s going to be one hell of a kitchen and the Bora appliance won’t help.
I’ll predict right now that Evenepoel will win at least one Tour in his career and so will Lipowitz.
For Red Bull, having the Belgian megastar and the up and coming German hero in the same squad potentially as rivals is advertising gold dust whatever happens.
That is a brave prediction. I agree it is possible, but for me, either winning the Tour is not particularly likely. I think Remco, unlike Lipowitz, is likely to win the Giro or another Vuelta. But I guess we will see. It will be fun watching to see whether your prediction comes true.
@John Maybe he means the Tour of Flanders. There is no way Remco will win the Tour. Pog and Vinny are several levels above him in GT racing and the young guns are ready to overtake him, given he always has a bad day or two in the high mountains. I can see him winning Monuments, Classics and GT stages in abundance though.
He was born at the wrong time. If the Tour still had 70km+ ITTs, Evenepoel would’ve been a contender. His tendencies towards jours sans is also pretty old school.
Even if people get sick of Pogacar winning, I don’t see the organizers bringing those back, because it’s just exchanging one form of bad television – one person being dominant – for another one: long flat ITTs are like watching paint dry.
There are 3 things that strike me about this.
Firstly I just don’t see how this can have a good effect on team cohesion.
Overpaid mercenary is parachuted into a team desperate for gc success where he joins a (relatively) underpaid young,local hero with a great first tour performance under his belt and also another overpaid import near the end of his career who has so far failed to do what will be demanded of Remco. Said rider also has moments when “the team radio wasn’t working” when things go contrary to his wishes.
Secondly, whatever has been said publicly or to the UCI, this deal must have been signed prior to the TdF. Given Lipowitz’s & Remco’s relative performances, no way would Red Bull have done this post tour, no matter how deep their pockets.
And finally, here is the problem with cycling right now as far as sponsors are concerned.
Only one race really counts, therefore only one winner and at the moment that is pretty much pre-ordained. The logical extension of this would be to pony up ten times the amount and buy Pogacar out of his contract. At least that would give a return on investment, no matter how expensive.
Err, I think Roglic has delivered on the GT objective given to Remco. Vuelta? Last year? By 2 mins, 36 secs?
“Paris Saint-Germain, the French team known for its colossal wage bill… but little silverware.”
Serial French league winners and current Champions League winners. They also ditched their version of the galacticos a while ago with the exits of Messi and Neymar.
Also, 2 riders in the top 8 on GC with 1 on the podium is considered lacklustre. Blimey!
This blog won’t be covering football…but PSG seem to be feted for a massive wage bill for years and little to show for it.
And I don’t want it to cover football. But PSG ditched the ‘spash the cash’ approach and opted mostly to grow young talent. So currently they don’t fit the analogy as they’re also European club champions. Maybe you should have said Manchester United!
PSG only achieved success beyond the relatively uncompetitive French domestic league once they cleared out the overpaid wasters, the Remcos and the Primozes so to speak, and installed a coach who does things his way or not at all. Football-cycling analogies never work, though the loss of free to air tv will kill cycling just as effectively as it’s killed cricket and rugby union, turning them into niche sports with no commercial traction beyond the already converted. There’s Sport, and there’s Football and they are two entirely separate things.
“the loss of free to air tv will kill cycling”
The organisers of the Tour de France, the ASO, are fully aware of this: they want the Tour (and other races) on free-to-air TV. And the french government also absolutely want the Tour on free-to-air TV (and similarly for the government involved in other races).
The only reason why the Tour is not on free-to-air in Britain (and some other markets) is because no free-to-air channel is willing to broadcast the race. The problem is that ASO can not get anyone to show the race even if the broadcasting rights are given away for free.
Cycling is beyond “niche” in the US, and even though NBC tries to Americanize the coverage (cringily), it barely registers on the sports radar. GCN+ was a better model, as it just gave us a way to access Eurosport for a small fee. If the cycling powers that be wanted to get back into the American market, they would have to subsidize coverage and aggressively promote American races. I’m not holding my breath.
Rule changes killed rugby union … they turned it into rugby league without the six tackle law.
Strikes me that you’re both right, emphasising different periods and approaches of PSG, both of which could also be applied to Denk’s team.
So, Denk did an excellent job building his team organically from Netapp through to Bora with shrewd signings, a team approach, getting better and bigger year on year and confounding the critics by making a success with the one signing that was seen as ‘galactico’ and out of his league, that of Sagan.
But the last few years, especially since Red Bull came on board, it has been more of a galactico approach. Are you a big name? Yes? Then we’ll have you no matter whether or not we can see a way to integrate you into the team. It’ll just work because the best riders mean the best results. Right? Riiiiight!
Except cycling doesn’t really work that way, at least most of the time. It’s still largely a team sport with individual winners. And Red Bull’s results these last two years have been underwhelming, not so much on an absolute basis but on a relative pound-for-pound basis. They look like a galactico team, one that doesn’t do badly but should be a lot better than it is given the money thrown at it and the expectations. They are less than the sum of their parts.
I’d like to know more about the sackings of Aldag and Gasparotto. They look potentially short-sighted to me, driven by people who may not truly understand cycling [Red Bull?] and want results they crave yesterday whilst not understanding that their approach may mean they never get them, even tomorrow.
The potential for this transfer to be a car crash for both Red Bull and Remco may be underpriced. Then again, lots of money and brute force can trump plenty of other shortcomings. See UAE who look more like the original galacticos of Real Madrid than the erstwhile pretenders of PSG.
I heard that part of the ‘galacticos’ approach that helps it make sense financially, is that merchandise sales and media attention for the big stars is so big it pais for the salaries independent of team results. Not sure if this works in cycling at all, although if it does, it will be for a Belgian sponsor with a Belgian star given how mainstream cycling is in that country.
Good luck to Evenpol. Make or break time.
Isaac Del Toro seems as if he has all the tools.
Redbull also bought out Van Gils from Lotto too
Yes, another big spend to get him in a hurry rather than sign him and wait. He’s had injuries and illness this season so we’ll see, he’s a good bet normally for plenty of races to come.
Who will Evenepoel blame when he finishes third, at best, at next year’s TDF?
They are buying the pre crash, 2024 Remco who was 3 mins behind Jonas at that years tour. If that’s what they are actually getting is a huge question given the subsequent crash and marred season. Some riders are never the same but they will know a lot more than us. Looking forward to the TT ks going up next year and a course to suit – not even Pogacars wants another GC procession
Remco going for the Tour win? He’ll have to wait until Tadej has won his 6th (at least).
As it happens, a legal case is brewing in Germany about whether footballers should be able to walk away from their contracts and/or be compensated for not having been allowed to since the Bosman ruling in 1995. It will probably not see a courtroom for several years and an agreement could be reached in the meantime. But presumably the outcome could have impacts on all sports where participants are restricted by contracts, including cycling.
I believe you´re referring to the class action suit started by “Justice For Players” in the Netherlands: https://www.bbc.com/sport/football/articles/cy5prnpy142o
The case in question hinges on two technical issues about liability when the football player breaches his contract with his team and wishes to move elsewhere: (i) is the new team jointly liable with the player for breach of contract; (ii) can the governing body refuse to allow the player to be registered to the new team during the period in which the old team is in dispute with the player.
The answer to both will be “no”. But that does not mean that the player can unilaterally breach his playing contract without compensation. It really will not make that much difference to the contract situation. A football player (or cyclist) will have to pay compensation when moving to a different team before the end of the current contract. There are contracts in lots of other industries which are similar; and they would have even more serious problems if a key employee could just walk away on a whim. [Aside: Remco, not Redbull, paid compensation when he ended his contract to Quickstep.]
The UCI will have to change its regulations about the second issue because they currently will not register the cyclist to the new team while a dispute is ongoing; but in practise this is a rather trivial change since no cycling team has been foolish enough to block the cyclist from registration with the new team.
I like Evenepoel, I think he’s a great rider. But I think he’s a little bit unlucky in that kind of like Van Aert he’s unfortunate that an even greater rider was born at the same time. But even if there was no Pogacar I think he would mainly be cleaning up Liege, Lombardia, a couple of worlds and a few ITTs. He has, or so far has had, a bad day in him. And always seems a little brittle. Not to mention his tendency for crashing. I think for him to win a Tour there would have to be an old school amount of time trialling, and some people would have to not finish. Maybe Red Bull will be able to solve those issues, but I doubt it.
I like Remco too. But as a Classics, Monuments, worlds and TT rider. I don’t think he’s cut out to be a GT rider and don’t think he’ll add to the one he’s won – it’s not just Pog and Vinny he needs to worry about, it’s the young guns too.
Please excuse the off-topic post from a long-time lurker, but I’m putting out a request that our esteemed host address the growing hot mess over the GPS trackers the UCI is trying to trial, and the disqualification of five teams from the Tour de Romandie Féminin.
This needs some journalistic clarity as one side conditionally protests what seems like a smart move by the UCI (and protecting their tested system and vendor), who seem to be protecting their own source of revenue. Or something.
Please Mr. Ring? Some of your sanity?
A slow handclap all round here. Several of the teams involved have their proprietary tracking system and seem not to want to try the UCI’s devices at this race. It’s bad for the trial, for working together to improve safety and undermines a fragile race which is caught in between.
It kind of sounds like the Velon teams wanted to sell their system to the UCI, and have their nose out of whack at the UCI exploring a different supplier.
If so, that Velon would have their teams boycott races over this demonstrates precisely why it is NOT a good idea, in terms of conflicts of interests, to mix rule/safety mandated equipment with team owned organisations.
Okay my four penneth worth
Remco is just 9 months older than Lipowitz. They are basically the same age, and look at their palmares, its not even close? betting on Lipo when you can have Remco? that would be very very brave in my book. So getting Remco into a team with proper support is worth a shot rather that Lipowitz
With regard to Pogacar and Remco, looking at their head to head stats they were pretty even up until June 2024. yes! its true! head to head 5 wins each, in the remainder Pog finished ahead in 14, Remco 11 Since then we all know what’s happened. What changed was Pogacar. he progressed whilst Evenapol didn’t. (Evenapol had crash injuries) Things could again very easily change.
I’ll stick my neck out here, Remco will win multiple Grand tours plus plenty of other stuff and Lipowitz will never podium in a Grand tour again. Worth 6 millions? Maybe if there is upside to that outcome. Its only 15 months or so since Pogacar went from super competitive to super dominant. Time will tell if that is/was a golden age or a permanent state. I sort of hope not, but for the time being I’ll be betting on Pog, and hoping that someone can raise their game to meet him.
You’re entited to your opinion but I’m pretty sure you’re in a vanishly small number of people who think Evenepoel will win “multiple grand tours”. And I reckon Lippo has the potential to at least match the number of GTs Evenepoel has won.
You are undoubtably right that there are few people expecting that, but I do think it is easily possible, although a TDF is more of a stretch, after all, he won the Vuelta aged 22. Lippo, even if you are right about Grand tours, how small a number of people think that? Would bring what else to the table? Monuments? World champs? I don’t see the evidence for it?
Wow Red Bull sales must have fallen off of a cliff in Belgium…