2025 Season Review | Alpecin-Deceuninck: Monument glory and Mathieu van der Poel finally shines at the Tour de France

And just like that, the 2025 cycling season has been and gone. And what does that mean? It’s time for the assessment and review of each team’s performance throughout the year. Who improved on 2024? Who took a step back? In today’s piece, we review the Alpecin-Deceuninck men’s road cycling team in the 2025 season. We’ll cover the team’s background and key riders, overall results with WorldTour rankings, a detailed look at Spring Classics, Grand Tour performances, transfer news, and a final verdict with a score for their 2025 campaign.

Alpecin-Deceuninck is a Belgian UCI WorldTeam known for its focus on one-day classics and sprint victories. The squad is built around the Dutch superstar Mathieu van der Poel, a multi-discipline phenom and cobbled King, and sprint ace Jasper Philipsen, who has been one of the very elite sprinters for several years now. The team’s identity revolves around aggressive racing in monuments and bunch sprints, leveraging van der Poel’s explosive attacks and Philipsen’s finishing speed.

Alpecin-Deceuninck notched 18 UCI victories in 2025,highlighting another strong season. These included marquee wins in the spring monuments at Milano-Sanremo and Paris-Roubaix, thanks again to their flying Dutchman.

In the year-end WorldTour rankings, Alpecin-Deceuninck placed 9th, with 11,712 UCI points accumulated. This was a slight drop from 8th place in 2024, when they scored 15.020 points. The small step back in ranking will be a small disappointment, still, Alpecin remained firmly in the top tier, nestled just behind INEOS and ahead of Lotto.

The team’s haul of major wins, especially two Monuments and multiple Grand Tour stage wins on all three, ensured they punched above their budget in terms of impact once again, even if their points total dipped year-on-year.

One could argue that Alpecin’s main goal always comes in the spring. And, in 2025, it was certainly where the top results were.

Alpecin-Deceuninck’s Spring Classics campaign was nothing short of spectacular in 2025. Kicking off in late winter, Jasper Philipsen opened the account with a victory at Kuurne–Brussels–Kuurne, winning the Belgian semi-classic with a textbook sprint.

Days later, Mathieu van der Poel took Le Samyn, a 1.1 cobbled race, as he continued his winter cyclocross form straight onto the road. At the first Monument of the year, Milano-Sanremo, saw van der Poel come out on top in a legendary battle between himself, Tadej Pogacar, and Filippo Ganna, to win the race for a second time (and a third straight time for the team).

Van der Poel continued to shine through the Flemish week. He stormed to victory at the E3 Saxo Classic, decimating the peloton on the cobbles to repeat his win in Harelbeke. In the marquee Tour of Flanders, the team went in as defending champions, and Van der Poel was aggressive as ever, but could not match Pogacar’s place on the climbs and finished third.

He was denied a record-equaling fourth Flanders title by a superb solo attack from Pogacar, who took the win while MVDP, hindered by an earlier crash and illness, fought back to claim third. Despite the disappointment of missing Flanders, Alpecin’s classics squad immediately rebounded at Paris–Roubaix. In a dramatic “Hell of the North,” van der Poel powered clear on the cobbles to win Paris-Roubaix for the third year in a row.

He overcame a late puncture and capitalised on Pogacar’s misfortune (a crash and mechanical) to solo into Roubaix velodrome for a historic hat-trick of wins (the first rider since 1980 to win three consecutive editions).

The 2025 spring will largely be remembered for 3 epic weekends of Pogacar vs Van der Poel. And this year, Van der Poel won 2-1.

Beyond those headline wins, the team’s depth was evident. Youngsters Simon Dehairs and Tibor Del Grosso scored back-to-back stage wins at the Tour of Turkey during April, showing the next generation’s talent. In the Ardennes Classics, Alpecin was less prominent, their roster is less suited to the steep climbs of Amstel Gold, La Flèche Wallonne, and Liège–Bastogne–Liège. Quinten Hermans gave it a go in Amstel but the team came away without notable results in the hilly classics.

However, given Alpecin’s cobbled focus, their spring was still an unqualified success. They emerged with two Monument victories (Sanremo and Roubaix) and several other one-day wins, underlining exceptional strength. If there was any disappointment, it was missing out on the Ronde van Vlaanderen win, but a podium there and dominating the rest of the cobbled campaign showed the team’s depth as well as their star rider’s ability.

Alpecin-Deceuninck approached the 2025 Grand Tours without a general classification leader, instead targeting stage wins. This strategy paid off, though not without drama. In the Giro d’Italia, the team aimed for sprints and breakaways. Aussie fastman Kaden Groves delivered a win on Stage 6 in Naples, a crash-marred day where he proved the quickest in a chaotic reduced sprint.

Aside from Groves’ win, Alpecin’s Giro was relatively quiet, Quinten Hermans hunted breakaways in the hills, but the team didn’t secure further victories in Italy. Still, the one Giro stage (Groves’ win) met their modest ambitions for the corsa rosa.

The Tour de France was a true rollercoaster for Alpecin-Deceuninck. They exploded out of the gates in July: Jasper Philipsen sprinted to victory on Stage 1 in Lille to claim the yellow jersey on day one. The very next day, Mathieu van der Poel won Stage 2, an uphill finish into Boulogne-sur-Mer, using his Classics ability to triumph in a reduced sprint.

With those back-to-back wins, Alpecin held the yellow jersey (Philipsen) and the green points jersey in the opening days of the Tour. However, the race then took a devastating turn. Philipsen crashed heavily in Stage 3, suffering a broken collarbone that forced him to abandon the Tour. Not long after, van der Poel fell ill, he was diagnosed with pneumonia, and had to leave the race as well. It was a true shame for Van der Poel, who was finally lighting up the Tour the same way he lights up the spring.

Losing both star riders by mid-race was a huge blow. The team suddenly had to recalibrate, their two biggest engines gone.

To Alpecin’s credit, the remaining riders fought on valiantly. They turned to Kaden Groves, who had been riding in support, to chase opportunities in the latter part of the Tour. Groves, primarily known as a pure sprinter, showed his versatility. In the penultimate Stage 20, a hilly stage in the Jura, he infiltrated the breakaway and launched a brilliant late attack to win solo by 54 seconds.

Groves’ unexpected win on Stage 20 gave Alpecin their third stage win of the Tour, tying them for the second-most Tour stage wins by any team (only Quick-Step with 4 and UAE with 5 had more).

For the Vuelta a España, Jasper Philipsen returned to action, determined to make up for his lost Tour. With van der Poel skipping the Vuelta (focusing on the mountain bike World Championships and recovery), Philipsen was the clear leader in Spain for sprint stages.

He delivered emphatically. Philipsen dominated the sprint stages, winning three Vuelta stages: he took the opening stage in Torino (earning him the race’s first red leader’s jersey), then won Stage 8 in Zaragoza in a chaotic bunch sprint and later claimed Stage 19 for his third win of the tour.

Alpecin’s Vuelta was very much “Philipsen or bust,” and he delivered for the team. There were some near-misses, he was beaten to the line in Stage 4 by Ben Turner, prompting reflection on missed chances, but overall three stage wins is an excellent return.

In summary, Alpecin-Deceuninck’s Grand Tour season yielded 7 stage wins across the three GTs (1 Giro, 3 Tour, 3 Vuelta). They demonstrated a remarkable knack for grabbing opportunities: whether it was Groves’ opportunistic breakaway heroics or Philipsen’s dominance in bunch sprints. The only setback was the loss of their leaders in the Tour, which likely cost them additional wins (van der Poel was even agonizingly close to a stage 9 win before being caught meters from the line, and he would have been a firm favourite for stage 21).

Yet the way the team bounced back in France and excelled in Spain showed they are able to compete even without their top stars. Alpecin can be proud of its Grand Tour showing, they were stage hunters par excellence in 2025.

The off-season sees significant changes for Alpecin-Deceuninck as they shuffle their roster for 2026. Several riders are confirmed to be leaving. Notably, Gianni Vermeersch, a long-time staple in their classics squad, is transferring to Red Bull–BORA-hansgrohe. Climbing domestique Quinten Hermans is also departing, as is classics all-rounder Timo Kielich.

In total, over a half-dozen riders are leaving, including Xandro Meurisse, Robbe Ghys, Jimmy Janssens, Juri Hollmann, Fabio Van den Bossche and others who supported the team’s 2025 campaign. This exodus is partly due to rival teams (like Soudal-QuickStep and Visma) poaching talent amid WorldTour mergers, and also Alpecin’s strategy to refresh the lineup.

But, there is no denying that there are some big names leaving Van der Poel’s classics army.

On the incoming side, Alpecin-Deceuninck is investing in both young talent and a few experienced hands to fill the gaps. The team is heavily rumored to sign Florian Sénéchal, a 32-year-old classics specialist and expert lead-out man, from the disbanding Arkéa squad. Sénéchal would bring valuable cobbled expertise and could slot in perfectly to support van der Poel in Classics and Philipsen in sprints.

The team is also linked with Gerben Thijssen, a fast-finishing Belgian sprinter likely to be surplus after the Lotto-Intermarché merger. If confirmed, Thijssen would join Alpecin’s lead-out train for the likes of Philipsen and Groves, while also getting chances in smaller races. In terms of confirmed signings, Alpecin is promoting talent from its development pipeline.

Overall, the transfers indicate a slight changing of the guard. This will be something to monitor next year, particularly in the spring.

Alpecin-Deceuninck’s 2025 season was highly successful, highlighted by two Monument wins (Milano-Sanremo and Paris-Roubaix), 7 Grand Tour stage victories, and a solid top-10 world ranking. They proved once again to be a powerhouse in the Classics and an elite sprint squad, even overcoming major setbacks at the Tour.

The slight dip in total wins and points compared to 2024 shows there is room for growth but their ability to consistently win big races is unquestioned. In a year where they delivered marquee victories and memorable moments, Alpecin-Deceuninck lived up to their reputation as a team of winners. They are truly punching above their weight in terms of budget. But there’s no doubt having someone like Mathieu van der Poel helps with that!

Yet again, Alpecin have delivered a standout year. The only real disappointments were when Philipsen and Van der Poel both had to abandon the Tour de France, but not before they had given us memories for a lifetime. Van der Poel, in particular, was a joy to watch all season long, and his performance at Milano-Sanremo was arguably his greatest ever. It will be interesting to see how the team adapts next year with so many important riders leaving, but in my view they will still be the team to beat in the spring.

It must be said that Philipsen may have his work cut out in re-claiming his Tour de France green jersey, even with Van der Poel as his lead out man. But still, 2025 was an extremely impressive year once more for the team.

Honestly I tip my hat off to Alpecin. It's an odd team in the aspect that its budget is only mid-pack in the World Tour, but most of it is in a very select few leaders who are proven winners. With no climbers or time trialists the team doesn't perform in that terrain but it doesn't aim to either, it's not what it does and it compensates with its cyclocross and mountain biking results - which we don't talk of directly much here, but do matter at the end of the day.

It's a team for the classics riders and sprinters. Put simply in the classics van der Poel delivered a 10/10 spring with victories in Sanremo and Roubaix over a peak Pogacar, and then went on to perform perfectly at the first Tour de France in years where the route suited him... Winning a stage early on, spending time in the yellow jersey, leading out Philipsen to a victory, being part in memorable breakaways... He's done what he had to.

The sprinters equally performed, with Philipsen ill in the spring and then crashing out of the Tour, but he still won the most important sprint stage in France and put on the yellow jersey whilst he then also went on to win multiple times at La Vuelta. Not a perfect year for him but good enough; Whilst Kaden Groves won at both Giro and Tour making it a perfect sschedule for the Australian, who is not only a sprinter but also a proven classics specialist in his own right.

The team does lose a lot of key elements into 2025 but with its three men showing no signs of slowing down and Tibor del Grosso rising into the top of the cycling world, I think they have no reasons to be concerned, whilst in the coming months they will be winning often in cyclocross.

Ondrej Zhasil (CyclingUpToDate)  

I think Alpecin rode a season that won't be a disappointment, nor a failure. With Mathieu van der Poel, they won two Monuments while Philipsen and Groves contributed to the team's palamares with a couple Grand Tour stage wins. Across the rest of the season, the team has always been present in the smaller one-day races, but there isn't much of extra value to what the team could've realistically aimed for with one of the two best Classics specialists and one of the three fastest men in peloton in their ranks.

Alpecin's greatest weakness - low team depth - might get solved in the future with the rise of Dutch cyclocrossers Tibor del Grosso and newcomer Senna Remijn. As things stand now, my subjective rating of Alpecin-Deceuninck's season is 8/10.