With Remco Evenepoel (Soudal-QuickStep) out of action until late spring due to his shoulder injury and other teams struggling to secure the budgets and big-name riders to compete, the UAE Team Emirates and Visma-Lease a Bike rivalry will again be one of the major narratives of the 2025 season.
Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe have Primož Roglič and Lidl-Trek have Mads Pedersen and Jonathan Milan but they are unable to compete with UAE Team Emirates and Visma-Lease a Bike across the whole season.
UAE Team Emirates and Visma-Lease a Bike have become more and more competitive in recent years. When Tadej Pogačar snatched victory at the 2020 Tour de France from Roglič on the Planches des Belle Filles time trial it started a battle for supremacy.
Pogačar won the 2021 Tour but then Jonas Vingegaard and Visma-Lease a Bike got revenge in 2022 and 2023, going on to win all three Grand Tour in the latter season. However, Pogačar returned to the top spot and reached a new level last year, after Vingegaard struggled following his Itzulia Basque Country crash.
Pogačar confirmed his dominance of the season with victories in both the Giro and the Tour, Strade Bianche, the Volta a Catalunya, Liège-Bastogne-Liège, the Grand Prix Cycliste de Montréal, the World Championships in Zurich and a fourth consecutive Il Lombardia.
He scored a massive haul of 11650 UCI points, helping UAE Team Emirates score a total of 37407 points. Visma-Lease a Bike were a distant second, with 20428.
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The then Deceuninck-QuickStep and Ineos Grenadiers topped the 2021 ranking but since have fallen well behind UAE Team Emirates and Visma-Lease a Bike in their fight for the bragging rights of the best team in the sport.
Visma-Lease a Bike topped the ranking in 2022 with 14975 points, with UAE Team Emirates second with 13373 points.
In 2023, UAE Team Emirates began to specifically target points in every race and celebrated the number one ranking in the UAE at the end of the season, despite missing out on a Grand Tour. The two teams fought for every point in the final races of 2023, with Pogačar's end-of-season success and Il Lombardia win giving UAE Team Emirates 30949 points, just 1295 better than Visma-Lease a Bike total of 29654.
Beefed up roster and fast tracking young talent
Jonas Vingegaard and Tadej Pogacar clashed yet again at the 2024 Tour de France (Image credit: Getty Images)
The sport's two biggest super teams have beefed up their rider rosters for 2025 and worked on their performance while carefully selecting race line-ups to be as competitive as possible in all of the biggest races of the year.
Pogačar and Vingegaard will both target the Tour and the Vuelta a Espana this season, setting up a rare two Grand Tour clash for the summer.
Pogačar will also clash with Wout van Aert and Matteo Jorgenson in the cobbled Classics, while Adam and Simon Yates will face off at the Giro d'Italia. Visma-Lease a Bike will chase stage victories in the Giro with Van Aert and sprinter Olav Kooij, while Juan Ayuso and Isaac del Toro are also overall contenders in the Corsa Rosa. Sepp Kuss will help Vingegaard at the Tour and Vuelta, with João Almeida set to play a vital support role for Pogačar in the Tour and the Vuelta.
Pogačar will target the team's home race at the UAE Tour on his season debut, while Jorgenson wants a repeat win at Paris-Nice. Vingegaard will also ride in the Race to the Sun and the Volta a Catalunya as he rebuilds his form ahead of the Tour.
Both UAE Team Emirates and Visma-Lease a Bike will also target smaller races in key moments of the season. Their talented young riders will be fast-tracked to WorldTour success, while also remaining to score more UCI ranking points.
Visma-Lease a Bike have created what they call the 'White Jersey Group' talent stream that includes their best young riders, many of whom have been promoted from their development programme. This includes U23 World Champion Niklas Behrens, who they signed from Lidl-Trek, Cian Uijtdebroeks, Britain's Matthew Brennan, and 20-year-old Norwegian super talent Jørgen Nordhagen.
21-year-old Uijtdebroeks will reboot his career after some back problems by targeting shorter stage races instead of suffering in Grand Tours. 19-year-old Brennan will make his debut at the Tour Down Under next week and could quickly make a mark.
"We’ll participate in more smaller races to give our young riders the chance to compete for victories. We believe this will help accelerate their development," Visma-Lease a Bike's Head of Racing Grischa Niermann said.
Visma-Lease a Bike lost Johannes Staune-Mittet, Jan Tratnik and the Van Dijke twins but signed Victor Campenaerts, Simon Yates, the versatile Alex Zingle and Daniel McLay as leadout man for Kooij. Four riders, including Nordhagen and Brennan, stepped up from the development team.
The UCI teams ranking includes points scored by the 20 best riders in each team and 20 different riders scored wins for UAE Team Emirates in 2024, including the USA's Brandon McNulty, Del Toro, Jan Christen, Ayuso, Nils Politt, Jay Vine, Tim Wellens, Almeida, Adam Yates, Pavel Sivakov and António Morgado. All will be expected to do even better in 2025.
Key points scorer Marc Hirschi has left for Tudor Pro Cycling and Diego Ulissi has moved to XDS Astana but UAE Team Emirates signed Florian Vermeersch to strengthen their Classics squad, Jhonatan Narváez from Ineos Grenadiers and 19-year-old super talent from Spain Pablo Torres stepped up from their development team.
Niermann threw down the gauntlet to UAE Team Emirates this week at the Visma-Lease a Bike team presentation.
"We saw a very dominant Pogačar last year and a very dominant UAE Team Emirates. We have to chase them and make sure that we're getting closer and getting to their level, that we can really compete with them in every race," he said.
The battle for supremacy of the men's WorldTour will begin on Tuesday at the Tour Down Under.
Stephen is one of the most experienced members of the Cyclingnews team, having reported on professional cycling since 1994. Before becoming Editor-at-large, he was Head of News at Cyclingnews. He has previously worked for Shift Active Media, Reuters and Cycling Weekly. He is a member of the Board of the Association Internationale des Journalistes du Cyclisme (AIJC).
