Not enough dopers coming off suspensions with high enough profile for his old modus operandi, and too many other teams now scouting South American scenes for his more recent modus operandi of signing up wonderkids to overlong contracts and pocketing the buyout when the WT teams come calling a year or two down the line. Why pay Savio a bunch for the next Bernal, Sosa or Cepeda and have to outbid the likes of Ineos when you can just sign the promising riders directly from espoir status yourself? Sure teams only have so many places on their rosters, but with the likes of Evenepoel, Pogačar, Ayuso and co all succeeding so quickly, teams aren't willing to let Savio pick up a potential 19-year-old wonderkid and check back on him in two years' time, in case somebody else at the WT level gets there first.
The amount of people that Acquadro managed to alienate with his bad faith dealings representing these riders probably made it a less lucrative route as well, especially when we got to that point where basically only Astana and Ineos would deal with him following the Sosa/Trek and Carapaz/Movistar sagas, since he had a lot of those South American talents Savio was hoovering up as clientele if I remember rightly.
Yeah, but Aquadro managed to patch things up with Movistar, so there's that. Still, despite his shortcomings and him being kinda sleazy he actually knows how to develop guys and hire staff members who do their stuff properly, one thing that Saronni was never able to do (I won't even mention Scinto and modern day Bardiani, because they are that bad.
Look how Cattaneo managed to turn his career around when it signed for them after the failure (and graveyard of Italian talents) that was Lampre. Yet lots of young Italian riders with good results in the u23 ranks end up at Bardiani where they don't do anything.
A prime example would be the Italo-Moroccan Omar El-Gouzi. 2nd best young rider in the 20119 Österreich Rundfahrt (30th on both the Glockner and the Horn MTF, both times ahead of someone like Ruben Fernandes, all of that before turning 20) when he rode for Tirol and last year he finished 4th on the gc in the Giro della Valle d'Aosta and 9th in the Baby Giro. He was never the best on a mountain stage, but never had a bad day either, a very constant rider with good recovery. who could turn out to be a really solid stage racer.
The only other pro team who is doing anything right is Eolo, they also have a nice developmental team, but even they haven't been able to up their budget after the company Eolo got sold to the Swiss Partners-Group holding.
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