{"id":173841,"date":"2025-10-01T22:48:10","date_gmt":"2025-10-01T22:48:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/173841\/"},"modified":"2025-10-01T22:48:10","modified_gmt":"2025-10-01T22:48:10","slug":"the-inner-ring-vasseur-sacked","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/173841\/","title":{"rendered":"The Inner Ring | Vasseur Sacked"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

C\u00e9dric Vasseur has been sacked from his role as general manager of the Cofidis cycling team. In comes Rapha\u00ebl Jeune<\/a> to the role. We\u2019ll see how long he lasts, because unlike rivals, this is one team that does change management if results are poor.<\/p>\n

Jeune has his work cut out because running a team like this is the equivalent of playing Pro Cycling Manager on expert mode, and then more.<\/p>\n

If cycling is the new football<\/a> then seeing seeing managers getting sacked for the poor performance of their teams is part of this. Team managers have typically been team owners and so management changes are typically rare<\/p>\n

Not so chez Cofidis. The team was founded by Fran\u00e7ois Migraine, who died last year. He was a cycling fan and president of a local club who founded the consumer credit company Cofidis so once the business grew it was inevitable that he\u2019d want a cycling team. It launched in 1997. A hobby project? Possibly two decades ago when it was one of the sport\u2019s super teams, it had hired the likes of Lance Armstrong and Frank Vandenbroucke. But it\u2019s kept going despite scandal because the sport overlaps well with the company\u2019s marketing demographic, especially as the company has expanded beyond France and into several European countries and the team has hired riders to match this, like a cohort of Spaniards but also Italians and Poles.<\/p>\n

Over the years Migraine was the one giving his managers headaches. In 2005 he sacked Alain Bondue after l\u2019affaire Cofidis \u2013 inevitably a doping scandal \u2013 and in came Eric Boyer. Boyer got sacked on the eve of the 2012 Tour de France. He was replaced by Yvon Sanquer who lasted until 2017.<\/p>\n

C\u00e9dric Vasseur was appointed as his replacement. Vasseur seemed a good match, a local for a team that is from the suburbs of Lille and a rider who could bring experience from his time at Quick-Step. Only the results haven\u2019t impressed.<\/p>\n

But the second part of the comparisons with football is the strong correlation of results with budget<\/a>. Yes Cofidis hasn\u2019t had the wins nor placings but it\u2019s not had the budget either. Here\u2019s the chart for recent years and note this is the total spend across their men\u2019s, women\u2019s and the disabled team.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Managing a team in the World Tour with a budget like this is tough, it\u2019s one of the lowest amounts going, alongside Ark\u00e9a-B&B and Intermarch\u00e9-Wanty, and this sums involved are the gross amount before we net of French payroll taxes.<\/p>\n

One problem for Cofidis that they haven\u2019t looked clever despite the modest budget but it\u2019s just not easy without money. Talent detection is increasingly reliant on funding; plus if they have got a talented rider holding onto them has been hard to impossible, see Christophe Laporte. Likewise trying to pull off a tactical coup is several times harder if the team is weak. With hindsight Guillaume Martin\u2019s Tour de France rides have been a highlight, a regular top-10 and with it visibility.<\/p>\n

Famously they didn\u2019t win a Tour stage between 2008 and 2023 but this wasn\u2019t a quirk, it\u2019s been part of a wider struggle to win big races, and sometimes just win. In 2020 the team only had two wins; in 2024 just five.<\/p>\n

Right now the team are facing relegation from the World Tour at the end of the 2023-2025 three year period and Uno-X take their place although there\u2019s only 200 points in it right now. Relegation needn\u2019t be ruinous as for now if relegated they\u2019ll stand to qualify automatically for the Tour de France as one of the three best non-World Tour teams in the UCI rankings but while they\u2019re very much a French team, they\u2019re also a sponsor with business interests in Spain and Italy and so the Giro and Vuelta matter too. The risk is beyond this where they\u2019re being overtaken by others.<\/p>\n

If Vasseur has gone we can ask how he lasted this long. The results have been meagre for some time; and we could circle back to the budget talk. But there\u2019s been more. A year ago there was a review into the lack of results and the staff changed \u2013 not Vasseur \u2013 and it was not handled well. Long term trainer Vincent Villerius \u2013 snapped up by Picnic-PostNL \u2013 found out he was made redundant when he saw he wasn\u2019t on the list of the those going to a training camp, as in Vasseur hadn\u2019t called him and others complained of similar treatment. There are reports of what football call \u201cdressing room issues\u201d, in pro cycling team bus bust-ups. Vasseur roasted Axel Zingle publicly<\/a> during the 2024 Tour de France. There are other tales<\/a>, of sarcastic WhatsApp messages, riders being blocked from racing if they didn\u2019t perform and more although part of this is because it\u2019s seen the light of day, similar issues at other teams don\u2019t always get aired. Also for what it\u2019s worth Guillaume Martin has been sympathetic about his time on the team.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Conclusion
C\u00e9dric Vasseur has been sacked by Cofidis. But they\u2019re the one team that\u2019s made a habit of ejecting general managers. It\u2019s hardly a magic solution to their challenges.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ll see if Jeune can give the team a sense of purpose and direction. Cofidis has looked like a collection of mercenaries hired to race together; being overtaken by Uno-X feels significant as the Norwegian team has an identity and mission, as well as superior results.<\/p>\n

But the one thing Cofidis has going for it is sheer persistence. In the face of meagre results the company still continues to back a team so while it gets overtaken by others it can always hope to outlast them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"C\u00e9dric Vasseur has been sacked from his role as general manager of the Cofidis cycling team. In comes…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":173842,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[4985,101,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-173841","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cycling","8":"tag-cycling","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173841","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=173841"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173841\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/173842"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=173841"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=173841"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=173841"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}