I think one of the most annoying aspects to UAE as opposed to other top teams is that they have so few pure domestiques in their ranks. Bjerg, Laengen, Majka, Novak, Politt, Sivakov, Soler, the Oliveira brothers. Even among those, Soler, Politt, Sivakov like to have a go at a few races as leader. And the Oliveira brothers basically don't ride WT level.
Everyone else on the team - from the top dogs like Ayuso and Almeida to the up an coming signings - want to win races. There's a host of talented world tour level riders who like to ride for themselves but who aren't good enough to be leading in major one day and stage races in a team with, uh, Pogacar, so to keep them happy UAE enter these races and clean up. Frustrating, but I suppose the inevitable outcome of hoarding individual talent the way they do.
To look at it another way, division of talent using individual CQ ranking scores is an interesting metric. Total scores are way higher now than they used to be, there are a couple of years where 1950 points is enough to be the highest scoring rider of the season, whereas Pogačar is putting up 5k+ (for comparison, Gilbert in 2011 put up just over 3k). But to show the amount of focus of talents into a small handful of teams, here is a list of all the teams to have put 3 or more riders in the top 25 CQ ranking riders in the last 20 years:
CSC 2006 - 5 riders (Basso 7th, Fränk Schleck 11th, Cancellara 14th, Sastre 18th, Voigt 19th)
Gerolsteiner 2006 - 3 riders (Schumacher 9th, Rebellin 21st, Leipheimer 24th)
Lampre 2006 - 3 riders (Cunego 10th, Ballan 15th, Bennati 22nd)
CSC 2007 - 3 riders (Fränk Schleck 7th, Voigt 12th, Cancellara 24th)
Rabobank 2007 - 3 riders (Freire 6th, Menchov 8th, Dekker 22nd)
Discovery 2007 - 3 riders (Contador 5th, Leipheimer 13th, Gusev 25th)
CSC 2008 - 4 riders (Cancellara 4th, Sastre 11th, Fränk Schleck 15th, Larsson 23rd)
Quick Step 2008 - 3 riders (Boonen 12th, Devolder 18th, Visconti 20th)
Columbia 2008 - 3 riders (Greipel 13th, Cavendish 21st, Löfkvist 24th)
HTC 2009 - 3 riders (Cavendish 4th, Boasson Hagen 6th, Greipel 10th)
Saxo Bank 2009 - 3 riders (Cancellara 8th, Andy Schleck 15th, Breschel 22nd)
Quick Step 2009 - 3 riders (Boonen 11th, Davis 20th, Chavanel 23rd)
Saxo Bank 2010 - 3 riders (Cancellara 8th, Andy Schleck 10th, Fränk Schleck 21st)
HTC 2010 - 4 riders (Greipel 9th, Cavendish 14th, Rogers 23rd, Tony Martin 25th)
HTC 2011 - 3 riders (Tony Martin 6th, Cavendish 9th, Goss 19th)
Leopard 2011 - 3 riders (Cancellara 10th, Fränk Schleck 15th, Andy Schleck 21st)
Sky 2012 - 7 riders (Wiggins 2nd, Boasson Hagen 6th, Froome 11th, Urán 16th, Cavendish 18th, Rogers 23rd)
Sky 2013 - 3 riders (Froome 2nd, Porte 10th, Henao 24th)
Movistar 2013 - 3 riders (Valverde 4th, Costa 7th, Quintana 8th)
Katyusha 2013 - 3 riders (Rodríguez 5th, Moreno 17th, Kristoff 19th)
Omega Pharma 2013 - 3 riders (Cavendish 6th, Chavanel 12th, Tony Martin 14th)
Omega Pharma 2014 - 3 riders (Kwiatkowski 5th, Tony Martin 17th, Terpstra 19th)
BMC 2014 - 3 riders (Gilbert 8th, van Avermaet 15th, Evans 18th)
Katyusha 2015 - 3 riders (Kristoff 2nd, Rodríguez 7th, Moreno 24th)
Etixx 2015 - 3 riders (Urán 18th, Terpstra 19th, Kwiatkowski 21st)
Movistar 2016 - 3 riders (Quintana 3rd, Valverde 5th, Ion Izagirre 14th)
Sky 2017 - 4 riders (Froome 1st, Kwiatkowski 11th, Viviani 16th, Landa 19th)
Quick Step 2017 - 4 riders (Gilbert 14th, Dan Martin 15th, Trentin 21st, Gaviria 24th)
Sky 2018 - 4 riders (Thomas 6th, Kwiatkowski 13th, Froome 15th, Bernal 24th)
Bahrain 2018 - 3 riders (Colbrelli 21st, Ion Izagirre 22nd, Pozzovivo 23rd)
Jumbo 2019 - 3 riders (Roglič 1st, Teunissen 22nd, Groenewegen 25th)
Movistar 2019 - 3 riders (Valverde 3rd, Quintana 20th, Carapaz 24th)
Bora 2019 - 4 riders (Ackermann 6th, Sagan 10th, Buchmann 19th, Bennett 23rd)
UAE 2019 - 3 riders (Kristoff 9th, Pogačar 11th, Ulissi 21st)
Deceuninck 2020 - 4 riders (Alaphilippe 6th, Almeida 10th, Evenepoel 16th, Bennett 18th)
Ineos 2020 - 3 riders (Carapaz 10th, Ganna 19th, Geogeghan Hart 20th)
Bora 2020 - 3 riders (Ackermann 13th, Schachmann 15th, Sagan 25th)
Sunweb 2020 - 3 riders (Kelderman 17th, Hindley 21st, Hirschi 22nd)
Jumbo 2021 - 3 riders (Roglič 2nd, van Aert 3rd, Vingegaard 16th)
Deceuninck 2021 - 5 riders (Alaphilippe 4th, Almeida 7th, Evenepoel 12th, Asgreen 20th, Cavendish 25th)
Ineos 2021 - 4 riders (Bernal 6th, Adam Yates 9th, Carapaz 11th, Ethan Hayter 22nd)
Alpecin 2021 - 3 riders (van der Poel 8th, Philipsen 10th, Merlier 19th)
Jumbo 2022 - 4 riders (van Aert 3rd, Vingegaard 4th, Roglič 17th, Laporte 21st)
Bora 2022 - 3 riders (Vlasov 5th, Higuita 13th, Hindley 19th)
Alpecin 2022 - 3 riders (Philipsen 9th, van der Poel 18th, Merlier 25th)
Ineos 2022 - 4 riders (Carapaz 15th, Martínez 16th, Carlos Rodríguez 23rd, Ethan Hayter 24th)
UAE 2023 - 4 riders (Pogačar 1st, Adam Yates 7th, Hirschi 8th, Almeida 15th)
Jumbo 2023 - 6 riders (Vingegaard 2nd, Roglič 4th, van Aert 5th, Kooij 14th, Laporte 18th, Kuss 19th)
Bahrain 2023 - 3 riders (Mohorič 17th, Landa 20th, Bilbao 21st)
UAE 2024 - 6 riders (Pogačar 1st, Hirschi 4th, McNulty 12th, Adam Yates 15th, Ayuso 16th, Ulissi 22nd)
Visma 2024 - 3 riders (Vingegaard 6th, Jorgenson 13th, van Aert 17th)
Lidl 2024 - 3 riders (Pederson 11th, Milan 19th, Skjelmose 20th)
2025 as of today:
UAE 2025 - 4 riders (Pogačar 1st, Almeida 2nd, del Toro 4th, Ayuso 8th)
Visma 2025 - 5 riders (Vingegaard 13th, van Aert 15th, Simon Yates 16th, Brennan 18th, Jorgenson 24th)
As you can see, for a large part of the period, the number of riders given over to teams who had multiple big names simultaneously is relatively small; where teams have got three or more riders into the top 25 on the ranking, they tend to have relatively little overlap in their targets (for example the several years of CSC/Saxo having Cancellara's goals alongside those of the Schlecks, or BMC having clear delineation between the target races for Evans, van Avermaet and Gilbert) so the team can adequately support them alongside one another. Oftentimes, if this is not the case, it is a matter of the team filling their boots at smaller races (see HTC with Greipel at times even outscoring Cav thanks to being sent to races he was well above the level of, thanks to HTC having to find room for two world class sprinters simultaneously).
The other thing that we note is that for most of the period, if a team has one or two of their star riders in the top 5-10 or so, there's a noticeable dropoff to the points acquired by the rest of their riders; back in 2006, for example, Quick Step had two of the top 3 with Boonen and Bettini, but then nobody else in the top 25. The top 25 are spread across far more teams earlier on, with these clusters amounting to a relatively small percentage of the top 25 (most notable is 2016 with only Movistar having that much of a top-loaded squad). Also, often if a rider is up in the top 10 and the team has three or more riders in the top 25, they not infrequently lose one of those riders the following year owing to the need to find opportunities in a crowded team, again Movistar being the best example of this, as each time they put three riders in the top 25 one of them subsequently moves on, with Costa leaving the team after 2013, Ion Izagirre leaving after 2016, and Carapaz leaving after 2019.
It seems like there is a sea change in around 2019, however, as apart from the complete anomaly that was Sky in 2012, helped by some very tailored ASO parcours in the first half of the season as well, teams putting more than 3 or 4 in the top 25 are rare, and if a team does do this, it's often clustered towards the bottom. There are ten examples of a team putting 2 riders in the top 10 from 2006-2018 (of which 2 see 3 riders in the top 10, HTC 2009 and Movistar 2013), and only 3 of which (Sky 2013, Katyusha 2015 and Movistar 2016) saw a rider in the top 3 supported by another top 10 rider. Since 2019, however, we have seen the same number of examples and are likely to surpass that once this year is completed; and no fewer than 7 of these feature a rider in the top 3 supported by AT LEAST one other top 10 rider. Hell, we have UAE and Jumbo contributing around 40% of the top 25 for the last few years, and this is going on
while the number of points scored by the top riders is going up and while the riders are contesting similar aims, as you can see that UAE's dominance is largely the product of stage racers who have relatively similar skillsets and so you would historically have expected to tread on one another's toes and need to be moved out to other teams to gain more experience and opportunity.
The other thing is the extent of the domination; the number of points João Almeida has currently to sit 2nd on CQ before the end of July would have had him 4th at year end in 2006, 5th in 2007 (ahead of Contador and Menchov!), 4th in 2009 (ahead of Cavendish, Gilbert and Cancellara), 4th in 2010 (ahead of Evans, Contador or Andy Schleck), while the number of points Tadej Pogačar has achieved for 2025 as of today, July 26th,
before the points for winning the Tour de France GC are added to his total, would already have won the overall CQ ranking for almost any other year - he's only 74 points shy of Philippe Gilbert's insane 2011 when he did the Ardennes treble, he's already nearly 500 points ahead of Bradley Wiggins' 2012, 400 points ahead of Chris Froome's 2017 when he won the Tour and Vuelta back to back. There are a couple of years' scores still ahead of him - Sagan 2016, Roglič 2019 and Valverde 2014 - but after tomorrow when the Tour GC scores go in, the only score that will be above him will be himself last year. And that score was nearly 50% higher than his own previous best, which he will eclipse just by finishing tomorrow.
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