"Visma is riding aggressively this Tour de France" - UAE boss 'warns' Visma about their tactics to tire Pogacar out

At the end of stage 8 of the Tour de France 2025, Joxean Matxin granted a few words to Eurosport to assess what has been so far a fight between Pogacar and Vingegaard. With the absence of mountains, the duel has been more psychological so far, with novel strategies, the tactician notes.

In fact, Tadej Pogacar has criticized Visma | Lease a Bike for its plans on flat or very low gradient stages. The Dutch team's goal from the start is that the UAE Team Emirates - XRG leader wears himself out every day, and arrives at the mountains more tired than a Jonas Vingegaard who they see as having more endurance.

Matxin made a clear statement on the matter. He did not want to criticize the strategy of his rivals, but he did throw a camouflaged dart at them, threatening the fact that this will not really affect Pogacar.

"We study and analyze the rivals, but we don't give our opinion because we don't have all the information about what they want. We have to focus on what we can do, control, and we will try to defend the lead," the UAE boss began.

"It's true that Visma is riding aggressively this Tour de France. It's always good that they are moving and trying. But it's true that they're doing it on flat stages. It's an opinion I absolutely respect. I guess they will have analyzed that in that kind of attrition stage Tadej is quite good," Matxín added.

While Visma is being aggressive, Tadej Pogacar is looking more conservative. On finishes like the Mur de Bretagne on Friday, where he won his second stage of the race, the Slovenian didn't want to attack when the gradient was not steep enough, instead waiting until the end to sprint.

But Matxin claims that this was pure strategy to take advantage of Jhonatan Narváez's quality:

"We have one of the best puncheurs at the Tour with Narvaez. We knew he was going to be in front. If he wasn't at the service of Pogacar, he would be a very tough rival on that finish. With him we had the perfect weapon to launch Tadej, and what better way to take advantage of a rider who leaves you a victory on a plate 200 meters from the finish," said UAE's top man.

In addition to the analysis of the fight between Pogacar and Vingegaard, Matxín also spoke about Joao Almeida, who suffered a lot this Saturday riding his first stage with a fractured rib:

"If we could choose to avoid the fall of Joao Almeida, who suffered quite a bit today, we would. But cycling is not mathematics in racing circumstances. But on a sporting level we are happy. Two victories for Tadej, yellow jersey and avoiding crashes."

"About Joao, there is a phrase in Italian that defines him: 'Che non molla mai', which means that he never gives up. He has a lot of courage, grit, he's a cyclist who never gives up and I think that if he really sees that his health is good enough for the mountains, he'll do it. We will try to make him recover as much as possible these days. We're just going to give him confidence and we're not going to put any pressure on him," he concluded.