“In football, by the way, this is normal. People leave and switch clubs,” said a clearly shaken Richard Plugge, the manager of Visma-Lease a Bike. He was confirming the news that his head of racing Grischa Niermann would be leaving to join Lidl-Trek as chief sporting officer.
Yes, in the world’s most-watched sport, managerial and backroom staff merry-go-rounds are a common occurrence. Coaches typically don’t last beyond a year or two, and teams regularly poach from one another.
But in cycling, said to be the world’s eighth-most-followed sport, it’s not common. Professional bike racing has largely been built on a structure of contracts being respected, management teams being in place for at least half a decade but often much longer, and rivals only pouncing for each other’s talents once contracts are terminated.
That illusion has steadily been eroded in recent years with a number of mid-contract signings and buyouts, but it was well and truly shattered this week with the announcement that Niermann — one of Visma’s leading strategic masterminds during a period of unprecedented success — would be departing for a rival intent on replacing them at the top of the pile.
The former German pro, who has been at Visma since 2017, will work under former Tour de France winner Andy Schleck, who has been promoted to Lidl-Trek’s CEO, replacing the well-respected Luca Guercilena as the team’s top boss.
Grischa Niermann’s decision to move to Lidl-Trek has caused turmoil this week (Belga / AFP via Getty Images)
These are seismic moves with major ramifications, hence Plugge’s visible vexation when he faced the press on an online call on Tuesday morning: just a month out from the Tour de France, Jonas Vingegaard — who is aiming to back up his recent Giro d’Italia success with a third yellow jersey at the Tour — has lost a key confidant and a man who has been essential to the Dutch team winning three of the last four Grand Tours.
It’s disruption that Visma is doing its best to brush off, but only plays into the hands of Tadej Pogačar’s more stable UAE Team Emirates-XRG setup.
Lidl-Trek, meanwhile, has discarded a tried-and-tested formula of 15 years. A decision that The Athletic can reveal has caused significant unrest within the team.
It has been known for some time within the sport that Lidl-Trek had not completed its managerial changes, which began in December with the appointment of Luxembourger Schleck — winner of the 2010 Tour de France — as deputy general manager, and continued in April with former Austrian rider Bernie Eisel becoming head of racing.
But few, if any, saw the appointment of Niermann on the horizon — even if the signs, in hindsight, were there all along. Lidl — the grocery store company — is thought to want Germans or German-speaking personnel in senior roles in all departments — from performance to finance, and marketing to logistics. And Niermann is one of a few Germans in cycling operating in elite performance.
Yet when the 50-year-old called Plugge in mid-May — a key juncture of the season, with the Giro d’Italia ongoing and most of the Tour de France team at altitude training — Visma’s boss was taken aback by what he was hearing.
“I was surprised when Grischa called me a couple of weeks ago to share his decision to leave,” Plugge said. “He had really just started in his new role [at the end of 2024], and he was developing more and more. I’m disappointed to see him leave because, as a person and as a great sports director, I have a lot of respect for him.
“I asked him: ‘Is there something I can do to keep you?’ He said it’s a personal idea of his to leave,” Plugge revealed. “I really am sad he is leaving.”
Plugge (left) has defended the working culture at Visma Lease a Bike (Jose Jordan / AFP via Getty Images)
Forty-year-old Marc Reef, who will replace Niermann as head of racing from September 1, also expressed his surprise and sadness, as did Vingegaard when Plugge informed him. “Jonas, in the first instance, was surprised,” Plugge admitted.
It marks the second big loss for Visma-Lease a Bike in three months, after Vingegaard’s long-time coach Tim Heemskerk departed after March’s Paris-Nice by mutual consent, citing a difficulty “to continue applying my creativity and passion.”
In the fall of 2024, sportive director Merijn Zeeman, the man credited with turning the team into a powerhouse and the architect of the Col du Granon ambush at the 2022 Tour de France (where Vingeagaard dropped Pogacar on an Alpine climb), left Visma to become general manager of Dutch soccer club AZ Alkmaar. That prompted a reorganisation of Visma’s hierarchy — instead of one person replacing Zeeman, five stepped into individual roles.
High-level, enviable success has continued — evidenced by two successive Giro wins, Vingegaard’s Vuelta a España title last September and Wout van Aert’s Paris-Roubaix success in April — but a small number of riders like Attila Valter have publicly criticised the team’s methods.
“When Merijn left, it changed,” Valter, who joined Bahrain-Victorious in the winter, told Cyclingnews. “And the team also felt a lot of pressure from outside, that we wanted to get back to the top, but we weren’t at the top. We were not the best team in 2025. And the more you force it, the more you start to burn your hand. At least I, and certainly other riders in Visma, definitely felt it. They listened, but they didn’t know how to change.”
Plugge insisted, in a strong defence of his team’s culture and workplace environment, that the departures of Heemskerk and Niermann were not a negative reflection of how the team is run.
“We have a really strong culture which we have built since 2015, where people who come in embrace this culture and they are developed within this culture,” he said. “Since Merijn left, we built a new structure with more people leading the sports department. I think the culture of our team is the most important thing: it doesn’t depend on one person.”
The message Plugge was conveying was that, as clearly irritated by the Niermann news as he is, this is not a story of sought-after experts jumping ship, worn out by their surroundings and possibly even concerned that the team is still seeking a new title sponsor for the 2027 season.
Indeed, he flipped the narrative the other way. “If you’re the leading team and you’re already doing well for so long, then you know that people are looking at your team. It’s not only in cycling but everywhere that people are trying to copy you.
“I’m always aware of these threats and that’s why we built this strong culture 10 years ago, a structure where we have successors in place or try to develop successors ASAP to make our team ‘anti-fragile’ when these events happen.”
Vingegaard has been one of the most consistent performers in the WorldTour this season (Anne-Christine POUJOULAT / AFP via Getty Images)
Reef, the man now in Niermann’s shoes, has the apparent full backing of Vingegaard. “He’s just won the Giro with Marc Reef sitting behind him [in the car as his sports director] so he also saw the opportunity to maybe even do even better,” Plugge said. “This will not hurt us or his preparation [for the Tour].”
Perhaps not, but whatever way Plugge tries to soften it, this is a significant blow. Niermann will stay on until the end of August, but in a background role — essentially on paid leave. He has been frozen out of Visma’s Tour plans.
When asked for an opinion on the mid-season timing of Lidl-Trek’s approach for Niermann, Plugge declined. “I don’t dive into other teams,” he said. The two teams did have a very cordial and friendly relationship, with Plugge and Guercilena especially being key advocates for team-led business and structural reform. But he wouldn’t even pass comment on Guercilena, his peer and friend for over a decade.
This is clearly a move that has really stung Plugge, Vingegaard and Visma — just a month out from the most important race of the season.
News of the changes caused unease at Lidl-Trek too.
While Niermann’s recruitment is seen as a coup that will move the team forward in the medium and long term, many decisions being taken by the team’s owners are being criticised both internally and externally.
In a team-wide video call on Tuesday evening, which around 150 riders and staff logged on to watch, it was announced that Schleck would become CEO as of August 1, the day Guercilena departs as general manager. Schleck’s brother, Fränk, will remain as the women’s team’s manager, a role he’s held since April.
Niermann won’t be the only new face: Dan Lorang, formerly at Red Bull-Bora-hansgrohe, which has been the WorldTour’s de facto German team for the past decade, will be joining as head of performance. Martijn Redegeld, part of the Visma stable for five years before joining football club Ajax in 2025, will become the new head of nutrition.
The raft of changes concludes what has been eight months of top-down restructuring, led by Thomas Rohregger, head of cycling at Lidl.
In October last year it was confirmed that the Schwarz Group, which owns the Lidl supermarket chain and who first invested in the team just before the 2023 Tour de France, had become the majority shareholder of the team, switching its nationality from American to German. The Athletic understands that Lidl owns between 71 and 75 per cent of the team, and Trek — the American bike manufacturer — between 25 and 29 per cent.
Multiple sources, all of whom spoke to The Athletic for this article on the condition of anonymity to protect relationships, said that Lidl executives have been satisfied with the sporting return to date — the number of wins has more than doubled — but since acquiring a controlling stake, they are impatient for even more success.
To that end, this past winter Lidl sanctioned the signings of Juan Ayuso from UAE Team Emirates-XRG, thought to have cost in the region of €10m, and they also recruited Derek Gee-West from Israel-Premier Tech, who rebranded as NSN Cycling ahead of the 2026 season. Recent Giro d’Italia runner-up Felix Gall is tipped to join from Decathlon CMA-GCM at the end of this season.
Juan Ayuso joined Lidl-Trek this year for the sort of transfer fee more common in top-level soccer (DAVID PINTENS / BELGA MAG / Belga / AFP via Getty Images)
Additionally, journalist Daniel Benson has reported that the women’s team are leading the way to sign Kasia Niewiadoma, the 2024 Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift winner, and Paula Blasi, the recent Vuelta a España Femenina victor.
According to multiple sources, Rohregger, who is driving the changes, wants to move away from the close-knit Italian heritage Lidl-Trek had under Guercilena and towards a German-centric approach.
The team’s headquarters and service course (where a cycling team’s equipment is held) has been relocated from Belgium to Germany, and it was no coincidence that in Niermann’s short remarks on his appointment, he mentioned that the team is “strongly connected to my home country.”
Forty-year-old Andy Schleck — who has developed a very close relationship with Rohregger — had spent the past decade working in his eponymous bike shop in Luxembourg and representing car manufacturer Skoda at the Tour de France, where his approachable and friendly customer-facing persona was seen as his strongest asset. But he has been outside of the professional peloton for several years, raising doubts about his suitability for a role in senior management.
Bewilderment also greeted the appointment of Fränk Schleck as manager of the women’s team, with Fränk having very little previous experience in women’s cycling; since retirement from racing in 2016, he has mostly been focused on talent development programs and his own mass-participation events. He replaced Mick Rogers, seen as a Guercilena man.
“The Schlecks have been out of the industry for 10 years. They don’t know anyone,” one source said. “Cycling changes so much in two years, never mind 10 years. To change one person in an important role is hard enough, but to change the whole performance group is another thing. You’re looking at two to three years before the team gets back on track.”
Guercilena set about attempting to work productively with the Schlecks, while simultaneously trying to maintain the team culture he had built since taking charge in 2013 and adapting to Rohregger’s demands.
“Luca didn’t agree with most of the changes, and not how they wanted to bring them in,” one source said, adding that Guercilena’s relationship with the Schlecks was “not good”.
“They are two ex-pros who’ve not been in cycling for a long time and then they’re thrown into positions of decision-making, and making decisions that were really disruptive and felt throughout the entire team without asking anyone else or reflecting on them.
“He could immediately feel and see the lack of experience they had, and he was trying to give them advice, explaining that disruptions have consequences, but they had no interest in listening. Luca was not at all appreciative of how they were doing things and communication between them broke down.” Those sentiments were echoed by other insiders.
The Schleck brothers, pictured in 2014 during their racing years (Bryn Lennon/Getty Images)
But Guercilena, even in an increasingly marginalised role, had presided over a start to the season which caused concern.
Injuries to Ayuso and Mads Pedersen no doubt hindered spring ambitions, but other riders failed to step up. They then endured a stressful wait of three weeks before finally winning a stage of the Giro, via Jonathan Milan on the final day in Rome.
There was an understanding from people within the team that Guercilena had had powers stripped away from him, but there were also some doubts over his ability to adapt to the new realities placed upon him and lead a team that was now one of the richest in the world.
Guercilena pointed to his track record of success with the team that dates back to 2011 when, as a sports director, he led Andy and Fränk to Tour de France podiums. Over the following decade and a half, with a mid-table budget, Guercilena’s teams often outperformed expectations.
Yet he — and everyone else in the team — knew that he had been on borrowed time since the winter, and he’d been expecting to be removed all spring.
In the announcement of the latest changes, Guercilena said: “I feel the time is right to hand over leadership and allow the team to enter its next phase.” But the reality, according to all sources The Athletic spoke to, was that Guercilena was pushed out the door.
“He is really down in the dumps by it all. Depressed,” one source said. “This team has felt like his kid. He had grown up with it, made it what it is today. To see it falling apart like this is really, really difficult for him.”
Upon the announcement of his departure, figures from across the cycling world took to social media in their droves to compliment Guercilena on his achievements with the team. A common theme was gratitude.
Many have even pointed out the insensitivities of dismissing Guercilena. In the fall of 2021, he was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma, an aggressive but treatable type of chronic blood cancer.
Guercilena is leaving Lidl-Trek after a long association with the team (Sara Cavallini/Getty Images)
Writing in Rouleur in April 2025, Guercilena revealed that, in early 2024, he thought he was going to die. His weight had plummeted, he couldn’t breathe without an oxygen mask, and his organs were failing. “I was yellow like a Simpson,” he wrote. “I had no muscles left, and my nerves weren’t working. That was a really dark moment. When I saw my own body not reacting, I was thinking it was clear that I too didn’t have a lot of time left.”
But Guercilena recovered, and since October 2024 he has been at full health, subsequently leading the team through its recent transformations. Yet he’ll be on the outside as the team heads in a new direction.
It’s a radical overhaul that Rohregger is banking on working, with a blueprint of backing up sprints and Classics successes with Grand Tour victories. But the dizzying speed and the method of the changes has impacted team harmony and unity.
In an exit interview with the team reflecting on his years in charge, Guercilena spoke about leadership — and there seemed to be a not-so-subtle message in there for his successors.
“When you make a decision as a leader, you cannot expect that everybody’s happy. That’s clear, because you always have in mind the big picture. But at least you need to try to listen to everyone,” he said.
Cycling isn’t soccer, but as the buyouts of Ayuso, Gee-West and Niermann show, as well as the dismissals of ‘old-school’ loyalists like Guercilena, it’s increasingly resembling it.
The repercussions are being felt far beyond the team’s own headquarters. It could very feasibly impact the outcome of next month’s Tour de France.
