Fabio Aru has signed a contract with the Cubeca Assos team through 2021, ending weeks of reports and speculation about his future.

As Cycling News reported two weeks ago, the Italian rider was the focus of Cubeka Assos' management after the Swiss clothing brand stepped in to save the team.

Simon Clark, Sean Bennett, Dimitri Claeys, Kilian Franchini, Lukasz Wisniowski, Karel Vacek, Emil Vinjevo, Conor Brown, and Harry Tanfield followed by Aru. European champion Giacomo Nizzolo, Max Valscheid, Domenico Pozzovivo, Andreas Stockbro, Michael Gogle, Dylan Sunderland, and Victor Kampenaerts are under contract until the end of 2022, while South African representatives Jay Thomson, Reinard Janse van Rensburg and Nick Dlamini will also remain with the team.

Alloo will probably lead the team in the Grand Tour along with Pozzovivo.

"I am very happy to be joining Team Cubeca Assos next season and I am very grateful to Douglas Ryder for welcoming me to the team.

"When the possibility of a contract first came up, and after speaking with Douglas and the other team members, I immediately felt that this was an environment I wanted to be a part of.

"I have not experienced all the success I had hoped for over the past few years, and I hope to take this new step to pull out some of the simple factors that have allowed me to get the results I have.

Alou was out of contract at the end of the 2020 season after three disappointing years with UAE Team Emirates. He abandoned the Tour de France in September and never raced in the UAE again.

In 2018, Aru had a disappointing season and within a year was diagnosed with a stenosis of the iliac artery in his left leg. He underwent surgery and recovered to finish in the top 15 at the 2019 Tour de France. While he found a level of consistency, he was never able to truly compete in major races, while tensions between him and the UAE hierarchy escalated due to a lack of key results and frustration that Aru was one of the highest-paid riders in the World Tour.

In recent weeks and months, Aru was rumored to be in talks with several teams, including second-place Vini Zabou Blad-KTM and Italian rival Bardiani-CSF. However, the 2015 Vuelta a España winner was keen to remain on the World Tour to revive his career.

In September and October, while Aru was looking for a new team, Cubeca Asos manager Doug Ryder was desperate to keep the team together.

Title sponsor NTT announced in September that it would end its contract with the team at the end of the campaign, and despite the optimism of the team management, most of the team leaders signed with other teams. Michael Valgren, Ben O'Connor, Edvald Boasson Hagen, and Luis Maintus moved on, and Ryder and sporting director Lars Mikkelsen scrambled to find players after Asos promised to invest in the team with a budget of about 8 million euros.

Alu lives in Lugano, Switzerland, close to the Asos headquarters in San Pietro di Stabio.

"We hope to welcome him to the team. Daniele Nardello, a former Italian rider who is now an in-house product tester for Asos, told La Gazzetta dello Sport.

At the same time, Mikkelsen told Cycling News that he has been approached by 100 riders, all of whom are still looking for a team. Mikkelsen is working tirelessly with riders to form a competitive roster.

The team has been busy on the transfer market in recent days, acquiring Harry Tanfield from AG2R, Connor Brown from NTT Continental, and Emile Vinjebo from Rewal Securitas. Tanfield had signed a contract with English domestic team Ribble Weldite, but Qhubeka Assos' sponsors were eager to have an English player in the team, so Tanfield was quickly snapped up.

Simon Clark and Sean Bennett are signed with EF Pro Cycling, but Aru is a completely different animal, and will be the team's only Grand Tour winner. The team still has veteran Italian climber Domenico Pozzovivo next season, but if Aru can return to his old form of winning stages in all three Grand Tours and finishing second and third in the Giro d'Italia, he will be one of the most important riders for the Kubeka-Assos. .