{"id":257207,"date":"2025-11-11T17:59:08","date_gmt":"2025-11-11T17:59:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/257207\/"},"modified":"2025-11-11T17:59:08","modified_gmt":"2025-11-11T17:59:08","slug":"building-a-team-from-scratch-for-2027","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/257207\/","title":{"rendered":"Building a team from scratch for 2027"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Would you sign Ben Healy for the 2027 season? Photo courtesy of SWpix.<\/p>\n

As we\u2019ve already started to explore, there are a huge number of riders on the transfer market for 2027 – well over 450 on the men\u2019s side alone. <\/p>\n

It got me thinking, if you were building a team from scratch, who would you sign to fill your roster? <\/p>\n

Would you build around GC talents such as Jo\u00e3o Almeida and Felix Gall, or would you follow the Alpecin path and create a team that focuses on the sprints and Classics? Perhaps you could load up in all directions and create a team well-suited for the entire season. <\/p>\n

Follow me on: Twitter<\/a> \ud83d\udfe2 \u2014 Instagram<\/a> \ud83d\udd34 \u2014 Bluesky<\/a> \ud83d\udd35<\/p>\n

So I\u2019ve come up with this. It\u2019s a list of all the riders out of contract for 2027 (so from the end of next year), and they\u2019ve all been given a rough market value based, primarily, on their current UCI ranking. <\/p>\n

The challenge is simple: build the best 28 rider roster for 2027 with a salary budget of \u20ac16 million. <\/p>\n

There are anomalies. There always are. For instance, as the values are mostly weighed by UCI rankings, the solid domestiques are harshly treated – although I guess there\u2019s a sense of realism to that – so you can pick up a rider like Nils Politt for an absolute steal. There are also plenty of riders who\u2019ve had tough 2025 seasons and have dropped significantly in the rankings and are very, very undervalued. What we\u2019ve tried to do is make the majority of the values consistent, so the high flyers are valued more than your current neo-pros or the bulk of the domestique riders. <\/p>\n

Another caveat, and you\u2019ll be aware of this from our reporting over the last few weeks, is that a few of these riders, for instance, Almeida, aren\u2019t out of contract next season, but I\u2019ve kept this consistent and used all the riders that the fine folk at First Cycling<\/a> have compiled as out of contract for 2027. <\/p>\n

The only \u2018rule\u2019 for building your team is that you need to keep your salary value or cap under \u20ac16 million. <\/p>\n

How did we get to that figure? We took the average WorldTour budget of \u20ac32 million. <\/p>\n

Then we asked three team bosses how much they spent on rider salaries. They all came back and said 50-60%, so we\u2019ve gone with the lower figure to make it a bit of a challenge. You have \u20ac16 million to spend\u2026<\/p>\n

Finally, these numbers aren\u2019t factual. As I mentioned, but want to repeat, they\u2019re based on UCI rankings, estimation and a bit of tweaking. We\u2019ve tried to categorise riders into groups so that we don\u2019t get lost in the details. <\/p>\n

I know that we all like to have these \u2018highest paid rider lists\u2019, but this isn\u2019t one of them. <\/p>\n

Another element to consider when building your team is to think of it like a time capsule fantasy cycling game. At the end of 2027, we can check back to see which of our teams has the most UCI points. (Hint: think who might have retired before that point). We\u2019ll only count points gathered in 2027, regardless of whether the rider moves teams or extends their contracts.<\/p>\n

Then in 2027, we\u2019ll revisit your selections, and the winner will get a year\u2019s subscription for free and, of course, the priceless glory that comes with winning such a challenge. <\/p>\n

And a huge thank you to Cillian Kelly<\/a> for helping with this idea, especially with the data.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s a screenshot of the data. The full list of all the riders and their values is behind the paywall. <\/p>\n

Subscribers can view the data for all 456 riders. Please feel free to post your teams in the comments below. I\u2019ll include mine in the comments once the article is live and I\u2019ve made some last-minute tweaks.<\/p>\n

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