Matxin highlights UAE's work beyond Tadej Pogacar's dominance: "We are not the PSG of cycling, who simply signs the best players"

UAE Team Emirates XRG is accused of being a team that simply signs the best cyclists in the world on a shoestring and then accumulates talent to win as many races as possible. However that is not the only factor taken into consideration to their success, as argued by Joxean Matxin who talks a bit about the behind the scenes of the Emirati team.

Joxean Fernández Matxín, the general manager of the most powerful cycling team in the world, makes it clear in an interview in AS that the money is not exactly the case, that they play as a team and for this he gives as an example what happened with his former rider Marc Hirschi in the recent Challenge Mallorca. "Marc Hirschi, one of the best in the world, didn't win being who he is because we did it as a team, with [Jan] Christen's win and Antonio Morgado's work."

Matxín explains that they accumulate talent because they are not only focused on winning now but also on winning in five years' time, which is why cyclists such as the two above, Pablo Torres, Isaac del Toro and many many more are joining their structure. He does not agree at all with the fact that they have been compared to other sports structures that, also with Arab capital, what they do is to accumulate talent with money without proper planning:

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"Obviously you have to think about the present, but analyzing for the future has characterized me for many years. The team bet on that at the time. For me it's not an idea, it's a concept. With all due respect, but I didn't want us to be the PSG of soccer, signing the best in the world and that's it. If we generate new riders coming out of these bets we make, it's added value to the team, and we have the money to retain that talent. I've tried to make us the best team in the world when we had the capabilities to do that."

He admits that it hurt them not to have beaten the record number of victories, after having only 81 victories to Columbia's 85. For this, he says, they give great importance to all the races, regardless of whether it is a grand tour or a minor race.

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"We can't hide things and it's something we would have liked to achieve, because really when there were four wins left, we had two good races and you're optimistic. We have our own identity as a team and something I'm very proud of and that is that we give value to all the races. We do not prepare only for the Tour and leave aside the rest. The Mallorca Challenge is important, the Volta a la Comunitat Valenciana is important... winning with many different riders means that you are giving your space to everything. The most important thing is not to lose ambition". 

So, speaking of that ambition, of course he doesn't hide that they would love, like Visma a couple of years ago, to be able to win Giro, Tour and Vuelta in 2025: "It's a challenge. Complicated? Of course it is. We start from the premise that we wanted to do it a few years ago and it was Jumbo that did it. You see it so close and, when it happens, so far away. That, for example, is one of the challenges that are positive for motivation when you see that a team has already done it".

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