A sum greater than yearly budgets of some ProTeams, it’s a massive commitment for the German team he believes: “Of course, with a three-year contract, they can split it over three years, but it’s a big gamble.”
Because with such sums also come expectations, higher than usual. “He has to win a major one-day race, which is certainly possible,” reckons Bruyneel. “He has to win at least one of the seven major stage races, like Paris-Nice, the Basque Country, Switzerland, or something like that. And he has to be on the podium of a Grand Tour. And the World Time Trial Championship is almost a guarantee.”
Is Grand Tour podium even on the cards?
That Grand Tour result would appear to be the biggest challenge, even though a Monumental victory against Tadej Pogacar cannot be taken as granted either. However Evenepoel doesn’t need to immediately podium a Tour. He can also lean back on one of his new teammates and co-leaders, namedly Florian Lipowitz who will be defending his third place from year earlier.
“It’s not a bad thing to have Lipowitz around. They’re not the favorites to win the Tour, so you can’t bet everything on someone who’s already stood on the podium once. A lot can go wrong, because even if Lipowitz improves, he still won’t be anywhere near Pogacar or Vingegaard,” Bruyneel weighs pros and cons.
Juan Ayuso’s astronomical moveYou would think that Evenepoel’s clause would become the most expensive of this winter, if not ever? According to Bruyneel, that’s not even remotedly close to the amount Lidl-Trek paid to bring on-board Juan Ayuso for next years. Unlike Evenepoel, the Spaniard had a long-running contract through 2028, whose cancellation accumulated to even higher amount.
“It’s the second major transfer where there was a buyout fee,” said Bruyneel. Sources report that the fee was 10 million euros. “That’s crazy.”
Juan Ayuso at the 2026 season’s Lidl-Trek press conference
Yes, Ayuso’s a Vuelta podium finisher from 2022, the same edition Remco Evenepoel had won, but since then the 23-year-old Spaniard is yet to take the step up towards his destined role of Grand Tour win contender. Perhaps the change of environment (without Pogacar and Del Toro around) will give Ayuso the inner peace to work his way up. Lidl-Trek give him 5 years to achieve something that would make the seemingly absurd spending justified.
And in any case, it’s not like they can go to a supermarket and hire a local fishmonger hoping he’ll become the next Jonas Vingegaard… “If you can’t have those two, who can you get? Ayuso is very interesting because he’s so young,” explains the former team director. “He’s a huge talent: you don’t just finish third in the Vuelta at 19. They didn’t have a major leader in the general classification, so it’s a good combination.”
For fans of soccer-like transfers, there’s a lot of action expected before the end of the year, including more contracts being broken, and shifts in power-distribution. Derek Gee is currently pretty much without a team at the moment, but with a €30-million clause that his former team expects paid… and then there is Oscar Onley whose 2027 contract at Picnic PostNL won’t get cancelled for spare change either…