"I can't guarantee anything beyond December 31, 2025" - Arkéa - B&B Hotels manager admits the team is in a very sticky situation

French cycling is once again lagging behind competition. And it's not lack of talent but of money that's holding the French WT teams under their necks. AG2R are going strong thanks to their strong sponsor Decathlon, but other teams are fighting with all they've got to stay even remotely competitive against rich super teams who are not bound by high taxes in France.

"Everything simply costs more," Marc Madiot, director at Groupama - FDJ, told L'Équipe. "The French teams, these days, are not in the position to fight with the top squads in terms of recruitment. We can't go on dreaming."

Emmanuel Hubert, manager at Arkéa - B&B Hotels, was equally downhearted and direct about France's financial handicaps and its consequences. "It's not like we're bigger assholes than the other teams [to work for]," he said. "The only issue at stake here is financial."

"When it's 40% on a 50,000 euros annual salary, it's not an enormous difference," added Cedric Vasseur, the Cofidis team manager told L'Équipe,  "When it comes three million, it's a limiting factor. The real concern is that top talents no longer come to French teams because tax-wise, they're penalised."

While Madiot compared the situation to "having knives are against our throats", the most critical development is at Arkéa - B&B Hotels. The World Tour team's title sponsors deals run only through 2025 and with uncertain future, two of Arkéa's valuable assets - Italian Vincenzo Albanese and Frenchman Clément Champoussin - are set to leave the team early as per a special clause in their contracts.

"Right now, I can't guarantee them anything beyond December 31, 2025," Hubert told Le Télégramme when asked about their departure. "When they have a contract in their clause allowing them to do so, they have the possibility of committing themselves elsewhere. And  they were very much in demand. I'm putting themselves in my place, they have to think about what happens after 2025. Right now I can't offer them that, I have to adapt myself to the situation. Face up to it."