INTERVIEW WITH THE VOICE A guide to beating Pogacar in Milano-Sanremo and a warning about the Tour de France: “Vingegaard is going to have that need, that anger, that extra motivation.”

The manager of the UAE Team Emirates, Joxean Fernández Matxín, just renewed his deal with the team until 2028. One of the most important people on a team that beat its enemies in 2024. He talked about Tadej Pogacar’s rivalry with Jonas Vingegaard, how the team plans to win Milano-Sanremo, and a lot more in an exclusive chat with CyclingUpToDate and CiclismoAlDia.

Talking only about Tadej Pogacar and his feud with Jonas Vingegaard. Everyone thought a year ago that the Dane would win the 2024 Tour de France because he had “swiped” the previous two wins from the Slovenian. Despite this, Pogacar had an amazing season, and now almost everyone believes he will win next year.

Matxín says some interesting things about how the media and fans react when a young, exciting rider wins the Tour de France.

Can we be sure that Pogacar will win the Tour de France in 2025, just like we were sure that Vingegaard would win in 2024?

“If we go back five years, it looked like Egan Bernal was going to win the Tour five years in a row. He won Tadej, but it wasn’t clear that he would win the next one. After Tadej won the second, he went on to win six Tours in a row. Then Vingegaard wins two, and it looks like he will win all six in a row. Injuries are the only thing that can’t be matched between years. Did it hurt Tadej in this way in the Tour? Yes, because he wasn’t able to make the same. Did Jonas get hurt? Without a question, we have been through it ourselves. Our injury happened 15 days later, but it was worse. Even though I don’t want to compare losses, it’s clear that it has hurt him.

warns of the danger of Danish….

“Were we mad that we didn’t win the Tour? What could we have done differently to win?” Yes, what will Jonas do? Of course he is. We can’t settle down, sleep, or feel comfortable…. Vingegaard is going to need that, be angry about it, and need that extra push to get things done. Without a doubt. We know that because we’ve been through it ourselves, but we’d like to do things differently. We’d like to keep control of it and continue to win the Tour de France, which is a very, very, very hard race.