"Would it have made a difference?" - Bruyneel argues Vingegaard would be unbeatable against any UAE tactic at La Vuelta

Much can be said of the 2025 Vuelta a Espana, where Team Visma | Lease a Bike and UAE Team Emirates - XRG were by far the strongest teams but raced with completely different tactics. One can argue that João Almeida could've won the race if the team had been focused on that goal as a priority since the start, but Johan Bruyneel believes that wouldn't have changed the outtcome.

“A different tactic wouldn’t have changed the outcome in my view. It just didn’t look good. One leader and all these so-called free agents, doing their own thing chasing stage wins, and not being there when they were needed. But would it have made a difference? I’d say no,” Bruyneel argued in The Move podcast with Spencer Martin. Almeida finished the race only 1:16 minutes down on Vingegaard, but the only stages where he managed to gain time on the Dane were the time-trials.

“We sit here analyzing everything from our screens, but the team knows exactly what power numbers their riders can put out. They may have known all along that it would be extremely difficult for Almeida to drop Vingegaard," the Belgian pundit argues. Although he understands the reason for criticism of the team, who rode for several objectives at once in the race.

“In UAE’s case, why bother with stage wins and the mountains jersey? Let’s try to win a grand tour with someone other than Tadej Pogacar. That would have been fantastic. In the end, it was a very good Vuelta for them. Seven stages, second overall, and the mountains jersey. They are by far the best team in professional cycling right now.”

That is the big question. Almeida was vocal about the lack of support on the ascent to the Estacion de Valdezcaray where Vingegaard made the biggest difference in the race, but it was ultimately the Portuguese who was dropped by Vingegaard. With Juan Ayuso, Jay Vine and Marc Soler each hunting (and achieving) stage wins in the meantime, then it was visible that there were different priorities between different riders.

“In the end, the criticism isn’t so much about the team’s tactics, but more about the behavior of some riders. We could only guess whether the tactic was A, but some riders went with B. I’d say especially in the beginning there was some disagreement with Juan Ayuso. But that mostly played out off the bike, with that press release.”

Ultimately from stage 13 onwards the team collected itself and began to pace a lot more for the Portuguese, but on the several mountain stages that followed, Vingegaard simply showed no signs of cracking, and gaining time on any climb proved to not be possible.

"Although Ayuso initially chased stage wins and wasn’t there when he was needed, that wasn’t the case in stage 20. They were all there and all did what was expected of them. And yet, there was nothing to be done against Jonas".

"Could they have done things differently in earlier stages? We always talk about tactics and strategies here, but often it’s much simpler than we think. You just need to have the legs.”