UAE Team Emirates-XRG team manager Joxean Fernández Matxin has said that Juan Ayuso, set to end his contract early and leave the squad at the end of 2025, will have a team role in what remains in the Vuelta a España.
Ayuso's bombshell exit from the squad was announced late on Monday evening, with Lidl-Trek widely tipped as a possible destination for the 22-year-old Spanish star.
The team's GC leader João Almeida, currently running third overall, complained after stage 9 that during the finale when arch-rival Jonas Vingegaard and top Vuelta favourite attacked he had been lacking in sufficient teammates' support to help him chase down the Visma-Lease a Bike rider.
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Almeida finally ceded 24 seconds to Vingegaard, while Ayuso, who had won a tough mountain stage to Cerler 48 hours earlier, was amongst those who dropped back, saying he had been tired. Late on the rest day, it was then announced by UAE that he would be leaving the team at the end of the year because of "differences in vision".
Speaking to AS a few hours before the team confirmed Ayuso's exit at the end of 2025, Matxin told the Spanish newspaper that the 22-year-old's role in the rest of the race would be to support Almeida "as much as possible."
"That's his role, and every rider's role. When Juan's job is to be in the break, we'll make sure he's there, and when it's his turn to work for the team, he'll do that, just as they have done for him," Matxin said. "That's beyond any doubt, for him and for everybody."
Matxin recognised that the team had not been correctly positioned at the foot of the final Valdezcaray climb on stage 9, something which made it much harder for UAE to react when Vingegaard attacked. Almeida received some brief support from teammate Jay Vine, but then had only Tom Pidcock (Q36.5) for company in his pursuit of Vingegaard for the bulk of the ascent.
"Bahrain are the actual leaders, but Visma are in the best position," Matxin recognised to AS. "In Valdezcaray they played it aggressively and they surprised us. We didn't expect Vingegaard to do what he did. We should have been more attentive.
"We normally race well and are more active, but I don't want to blame anybody in the team. They simply surprised us, and they did it well, and we have to recognise that."
Regarding Almeida's comments at the finish that he had been isolated, Matxin said: "If the entire team had been together, as Visma were, we could have reacted. I have no doubt that Jay Vine did a good job, he worked there, and possibly a rider like Ayuso, like [Marc] Soler, like [Felix] Großschartner would have been useful.
"Maybe they thought that the climb was already under control and we would have needed any of them to give Almeida a hand. What Almeida said was not a criticism, it was the reality and you shouldn't take it in a critical way.
"Sometimes we're ahead, covering the race, and this time when it broke apart, we weren't up there. That's the reality."
Almeida now goes into the second week with a 37-second gap on Vingegaard, with the first of three second-week mountain top finishes, to Larra Belagua, on Tuesday's stage 10, a time gap Matxin said is not impossible to bridge, particularly with two thirds of the race and 80% of the toughest terrain yet to come. Stages 13 and 14, to the Angliru and Farrapona, will be critical, he predicted, and in the team, Almeida is expected to get better as the race goes on.
"Almeida is a rider who builds up gradually and who goes from less to more," Matxin said. "We'll hope he goes on doing that. Jonas will have to keep more of an eye on the riders behind him that he usually does – I have no doubt about that."
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