Zam_Olyas said:
Paraphrasing:
Christina Watches - Onfone (CWO) have money and willpower to strengthen their team, but they're stopped by a UCI rule saying that more than half of the riders on a Continental team have to be U28.
Right now the team has 14 riders, 7 of whom are below 28. So they have to hire another U28 rider to comply with the rules, before even thinking of hiring Rebellin and/or Vandborg.
If they'd hire Rebellin, they'd also have to sign another U28 rider, but that would give them 17 riders - only 16 are allowed on a Continental team. If they also hire Vandborg, it would even be 19 riders.
A Continental team is allowed to sign 19 riders if three of them are "specialists" belonging to the top-150 of another cycling discipline (track, cross, MTB; maybe even BMX?), and that is stated in the contract.
Claus Hembo says: "It's our own fault. We'll have to learn to read the rule book once in a while". He also says that the team apparently has reached the limit of how good a Continental team may become, and that they'll want to step up to ProContinental to be able to hire more and stronger riders.
My own opinion on this:
Bloody amateurs.

They had a very similar case last season, when they also ran into that 16-rider limit; and the hilarious thing was that they had some "specialists" among their riders, so they could have signed another rider. But they forgot to give these "specialists" the special contract required for this clause to become effective...

And they haven't reached the limit of strength in a Continental team, only the limit of how many oldies you can hire.
This whole team is even more amateuristic than Rock Racing was.