For a long time, Edoardo Affini was only Italian cyclist on Visma | Lease a Bike men’s team. But that is bound to change in 2026 as the Dutch team signed three new riders coming from the Italian peninsula. Next to Pietro Mattio who graduated from Visma’s academy, there will be also Davide Piganzoli and Filippo Fiorelli joining from Italian ProTeams.”Before me there was only Battaglin,” Affini laughs when the new situation is brought up to him by bici.pro. “Next year there will be four of us. Honestly, it doesn’t make much of an impression on me, except that it will be nice to speak my language every now and then if we’re in the same race. At our level, it can be nice to have a compatriot, but then the decisions are made by the team based on many other factors.”
Affini joined the team four years ago after a stint at Mitchelton – Scott. And with his arrival, the best period in Visma’s history arrived too. “When I arrived in 2021, the team was still on the rise. Then you could say that 2022 and 2023 were the most prolific years. In 2025 we won two out of three Grand Tours and we finished second in the third, which doesn’t seem so bad to me.”
“But it’s true that the biggest sponsors are after the Tour, because they have the biggest media response, like the Champions League. The Giro, the Vuelta and the classics are important, there’s little to go around, but the Tour is more. And we tried to win the Tour, but Tadej and his team were superior to us.”
Nutrition changes will do wonders
While Piganzoli joins from Polti VisitMalta as one of the most outstanding talents at the ProTeam scene, the signing of more experienced Fiorelli was rather unexpected. However Affini is confident both debutants at the WorldTour level can take some steps up.
Davide Piganzoli finished 14th overall at the Giro d’Italia
“I don’t know the inside story of Polti and Bardiani,” Affini admits. “I’m not sure what they’re used to, but I think Fiorelli and Piganzoli will make a quantum leap in terms of attention to detail and nutrition, which is certainly a very important aspect here. I’m thinking especially of Piganzoli, if he wants to improve as a GC rider, perhaps initially as an important support for Jonas or Simon. Likewise, the entire performance level is really taken care of to the maximum.”
“I don’t know if other teams have the same attention to detail, I don’t know if that’s possible. Maybe each team has its own emphasis on one thing rather than another, but I think they’ll find a very professional environment here, one that supports them so they can improve. As for Mattio, he’s been with us for three years. If he still hasn’t understood what kind of environment we’re talking about (laughs), maybe we have a problem…”
“When I came here,” Affini recalls his own experience, “I definitely noticed the biggest difference in nutrition. Those were the years when they were starting to push the carbs up a notch. Maybe I would have done it even if I had stayed at Mitchelton, but here I found a radical change. It took me a bit of time to get used to it, but then everything worked really well. They try to make you grow, but they evaluate it on a case-by-case basis.”