Lidl-Trek in search of a top-tier leader: "It's not easy to compete with the big teams and riders like Tadej Pogacar and Remco Evenepoel"
Cycling
Lidl-Trek belongs among the teams who don't have deep into their pockets, but it didn't really reflect in their transfer market activity with only four new recruits into 2025. The team of manager Luca Guercilena seems to by quite content with its current lineup, although there's always room for improvement. The one thing the American is missing seems to be a world-class leader, someone who could fight for a Grand Tour title.
Lidl joined the team mid-2023 and their significant investment allowed Guercilena to massively improve the quality of the men's team, the already strong women's team, and even set up a top development structure. However the Lidl effect wasn't as immediate as we may have expected.
"We were a good team before Lidl came on board but our budget was limited. We need to strengthen the team and improve and we did that in 2023 and 2024. Now, we have to step up even more. We've got to show how good we really are," Guercilena explains in an interview for Cyclingnews.
Mattias Skjelmose made a good impression with 5th place at Vuelta, but it's still quite far from the team's idea of Tour de France podium, let alone victory. In addition Tao Geoghegan Hart is still struggling with consequences of his injury and Giulio Ciccone never really became the GC leader he aspired to be. Who will be guiding light for Lidl-Trek then?
"There are two ways to have a Grand Tour leader - you can develop them in-house, which takes time and needs a scouting programme and a development team, or you buy them," Guercilena said, admitting Lidl-Trek are looking at both options.
But the options are very limited and Guercilena prefers to not rush things. "It's not easy to compete with the big teams and riders like Tadej Pogacar and Remco Evenepoel but that's what we want to do. We tend to look more long to medium term and develop our riders in-house."
"Pro cycling never sleeps, nobody waits for the Tour de France anymore, the rider market and talks go on all year, even before the final 12 months of a rider's contract. We're already active and studying the riders and deals that could be available for 2026 and fit in our project. If somebody comes to the market, we'll look at them carefully."
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- Tadej is in his grand tour years, we might see him win two a year for the next three years, if he can achieve that he will win all three at some point, this will cement him as the best pro cyclist of all time, winning like this in the modern era. It's a big ask but he can do it, he's shown he has what it takes.awp11-02-2025
- He probably struck it off this years’ list after the recon ;-)Mistermaumau10-02-2025
- I think the guy has a problem, hasn’t won even a small tour since 2021. Always up there but something’s always missing when it matters. Perhaps he’s more like Kuss than assumed, not impossible knowing the Portuguese.Mistermaumau10-02-2025
- 2026 is the time he will do it and will be matured 27 aged the time in late April next year. For that race he will just only focus Ardenes Weeks, Tour de Suisse, mainly Tour de France, San Sebastian, Canadian GPs, Worlds and Autumn Classics.
James2631810-02-2025 - And I believe that Pogacar will dominate Flandersvappaxbipmv10-02-2025
- He’ll get good money wherever he goes so I don’t think that will be an issue. His UAE contract is for this year and next so even without ending/changing contract, he could be on the market soon enough.mobk10-02-2025
- Everything else is unimportant except the money. He may not achieve a GT win but he will get the moneyabstractengineer10-02-2025
- It has deteriorated in the same fashion many things do, first the US, then UK, then some large EU countries, then it generalises world-wide, screen content probably plays some responsibility as does the ratio of individualism towards collectivism. But, it wouldn’t be a problem if all these authorities would learn to adapt. They do, slowly in many domains like drug smuggling (studying traffickers psychology) but not in others like child abuse (refusing to focus on more likely perpetrators) and unfortunately, public safety has never been a priority (except short-term symbolically after big accidents, terrorist attacks, etc.) and cycling races are considered a low ranking level of public safety, hardly surprising as mediatically any accident is easy to blame on someone else because it’s quite easy to manipulate a storyline when the media itself is not interested in getting to the bottom of things.Mistermaumau10-02-2025
- Kind if predictable that he’s doing this on one of the days before if you ask me.Mistermaumau10-02-2025
- Agreed! I go to a lot of gigs and festivals and you can see how the security has improved over the years. They are now largely there to support the event rather than police it, by taking away the "bouncer" approach policing becomes less necessary. Repecting the police and authorities, that's another question. Respect for the police is increasingly non-existant certainly in the UK, who's to say its much different anywhere elseslappers6610-02-2025