"15 million euros" - Patrick Lefevere makes astonishing claim of how much Lidl-Trek paid to buy out Juan Ayuso's UAE contract

Patrick Lefevere no longer runs Soudal - Quick-Step, but he remains one of the most influential and feared voices in professional cycling. The veteran Belgian executive dissected the sweeping changes at Lidl-Trek and unleashed a barrage of scathing critiques at the team’s new leadership. Among other points, he discussed what signing Juan Ayuso might have cost the now German-registered team on the transfer market.

In his weekly column for Het Nieuwsblad, Lefevere questioned both the exit of Luca Guercilena and the spending model driven by Lidl, as well as the blockbuster deals struck in the market. The Belgian believes the team is sliding into a dangerous dynamic, marked by huge investments, hasty decisions, and an internal reshuffle arriving at the worst possible time.

On the departure of Luca Guercilena, Lefevere reached for a brutally sharp analogy to describe what happened. “First there was the murder of Julius Caesar, now there’s the press release with which Lidl-Trek dismissed Luca Guercilena this week,” Lefevere wrote, hinting at a decision that came as a shock for those who follow the German team.

The Belgian took particular aim at the corporate tone used by the team to announce the Italian’s exit. “We thank him for his vision, leadership and passion… blah blah blah". For Lefevere, those words mask a departure far more traumatic than the public version suggests.

“It may not be a literal stab in the back, but it’s still cowardice,” added the former Quick-Step boss. Lefevere argues Guercilena deserved completely different treatment after so many years building the project and establishing the team among the WorldTour’s leading structures.

“Clearly they feel current results don’t match all the investments they’ve already made,” wrote Lefevere. He also hinted that spending is spirallng. “If I’m to believe what you hear in the peloton, an awful lot of money has already been thrown around,” he added.

The sharpest criticism came when he addressed the team’s marquee signings. Lefevere recalled that he himself sounded out Juan Ayuso while still running Soudal - Quick-Step. According to him, the deal was utterly impossible for structures with tighter budgets.

“I’ve said before that I asked UAE Team Emirates about Juan Ayuso,” he recalled. The answer from Joxean Matxin shut down any negotiation. “‘Impossible,’ he told me, ‘that will cost at least fifteen million euros,’” the Belgian wrote.

Lefevere even used a popular Belgian expression to underline that the move was out of Quick-Step’s reach. “That wasn’t food for our plate,” he said. Yet a few months later he watched Lidl-Trek close the deal for the Spanish rider, and believes the same amount of money may have been involved. Previously, values of up to €10 million have been reported.

The former manager also questioned the signing of Derek Gee-West and hinted that the figures at Lidl-Trek are excessive even by modern cycling standards. Although he avoided specific numbers, he made his view on the transfer crystal clear.

“I also heard a figure about the Derek Gee-West signing,” Lefevere explained. “Not concrete enough to repeat here, but let’s say even half would seem too much money to me,” he added pointedly during his transfer-market analysis.

For Lefevere, Lidl-Trek and Red Bull-BORA-hansgrohe currently embody a new model in the international peloton. He believes both teams are behaving like newly enriched structures, trying to buy prestige, talent, and sporting clout in short order.

Whilst their budgets do not yet match those of UAE, it is quite likely that their title sponsors such as Red Bull and Lidl have made big investments for specific transfers - not money that will have bee included in the yearly budget. With that, they're slowly closing the gap to the teams that comfortably held the top previously.

“Lidl-Trek and Red Bull-BORA-hansgrohe are the 'nouveaux riches' of the peloton,” he wrote. He argued both teams are charging into every modern trend in cycling. “They spend a huge amount of money on everything that’s fashionable,” he added.

However, the veteran boss made clear he doesn’t believe stockpiling stars and splashing millions automatically guarantees success. “The question is whether all those pieces really fit together,” he noted. For Lefevere, building a great team takes far more than financial muscle.

“Such a dramatic game of musical chairs one month before the Tour de France,” he wrote with evident disbelief. In his view, these moves create tension, insecurity, and distractions within a roster that should be fully focused on preparing the biggest race of the year.

“If Juan Ayuso or Mattias Skjelmose manage to do something significant at the Tour, it will be in spite of this reorganisation,” he stated. He signed off with a final, cutting line: “It certainly won’t be thanks to it.”