"Pogacar wants Ayuso out immediately" - Dutch pundit argues World Champion had a say in Ayuso's UAE departure

Juan Ayuso's departure from UAE Team Emirates - XRG is currently the hot topic in the Vuelta a Espana, but the decision to part ways was already made long before the race began. Thijs Zonneveld brings to question how much Tadej Pogacar and Ayuso's own personality had to do with the way the topic has unfolded over the past few days.

"You've seen this coming for a year or two. You don't need to be clairvoyant to see that this has been in the making for a long time. That this shitshow has been going on for far too long. You could sense it coming," Zonneveled argued in the 'In de Waaier' podcast. "He's often made himself a bit impossible in the team, by riding for himself so often, even when he was asked to do otherwise. We all saw last year's Tour, with the Galibier stage. Almeida was completely fed up with it then. He'd do half-heartedly and then finish second behind Pogacar".

At that Tour, there was a rift that formed between Ayuso and the Slovenian after his positioning at the race and latter departure from the team which saw him not play a role in Pogacar's victory in Nice. "There were already cracks in him then, you could see it. Pogacar and Ayuso aren't a good combination at all. Pogacar wants Ayuso out immediately. He's the big and sole leader in the team, while Ayuso was promised the Grand Tours without Pogacar. That already bothers Pogacar himself, that Ayuso's schedule had to be taken into account."

Adding to that, Ayuso had his own ambitions, and taking into consideration his quality and the potential when he was brought into the team, that would have been justified for any team in the World Tour. "I think Ayuso is someone who just wants to win and doesn't care about anyone else. That's completely inconsistent. You just see it go wrong this year. You see that in the Giro, too, where Ayuso wins a stage and then suffers a setback. That he just rides around with a face like an earworm, does nothing for anyone else, and ultimately drops out of the race without even having ridden a meter ahead of Del Toro... That makes you less popular within the team in a short time."

And with so many big faces in the team, it seemed like there weren't many that looked to protect Ayuso, mainly in an atmosphere where the Spaniard was constantly under attack or questioning when he was racing the Giro and preparing for the Vuelta.

"Before the Vuelta, it's already been decided that they'll part ways. Pogacar already said in the Tour that he wasn't going to do the Vuelta. They drafted Ayuso in for that. That never went well, of course. I think Ayuso did very poorly in that reserve role".

"He thought from the start: I'm going to leave here, I'm going to see if I can ride a general classification, and if that doesn't work out, I'm going to win stages for myself; I'm definitely not going to lead the race for anyone else." Ultimately, Ayuso dropped out of GC and went on to win stage 7 in Cerler from the breakaway. On stage 10 he paced for João Almeida, something that may happen more often over the coming days.

"I don't know if he has any friends within the team, but he probably doesn't have many," Zonneveld argues. In a team with so many big leaders and so many young prospects who are promised a leadership role in the future, the environment is highly competitive and not for everyone. In the recent past we've seen riders like Remco Evenepoel and Tom Pidcock leaving their teams, bringing alongside their own staff members whom they were quite close to. Ayuso may not have that same power but have a similar situation within UAE as the other two.

"In many teams, you have a target, and that's a nasty phenomenon. You just have to manage that as a team. It's Pogacar's team. I think he has the exclusive right to these kinds of things. So if he's against someone and for someone else, then everyone is automatically like that. I think everyone on that team thinks 'if I go against Pogacar, I'm digging my own grave. Including Gianetti and Matxin'."