2023-10-14 17:42:12
After the merger of Jumbo and Soudal falls, reflections appear, which for the most part are aimed at criticizing how the operation was handled in every sense. One of the most interesting is the one issued by Bessel Kok, who despite being president of the Belgian team, did not agree with the negotiations carried out – in which he did not participate.
“They were talking about 2024. That date was not possible at all. How was it possible that the two biggest teams in the world were talking about a period of a few weeks? It was a very complex project, everyone knew it,” Kok said in an interview with Het Laatste Nieuws.
The reason for this simplistic management was because “the project was proposed as a purely financial operation”, a serious error, since such a structure is made up of countless other factors that were not properly evaluated. “The complexity of cycling teams was underestimated,” said Kok.
According to him, the negotiation had to have started at least a year in advance as various legal aspects were involved, such as contracts with cyclists, bicycle suppliers, etc.
So, if it was a complex maneuver, why was it carried out in such a hurry? “I think there was more of a rush in Jumbo than in Bakala. I imagine Richard Plugge will be forced to find ways to accommodate Jumbo’s departure. He has several top running backs on multi-year contracts. He runs one of the biggest cycling teams in the world and faces the same problems as all teams. Cycling is financially very unstable. Plugge analyzed it entirely from a financial point of view,” he explained.
And even though the absorption will no longer occur, the process has brought collateral damage to the ‘Wolfpack’ internally. “There is a lot of damage and little result. Cyclists and staff have lived in total uncertainty for several weeks. They are employees. I’m not advocating a socialist approach, but a lot of things went through their heads and no one said anything. “They felt like they were being exchanged,” Kok explained.
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