Dave Brailsford to leave Manchester United and resume wider Ineos Sport role

Dave Brailsford is set to depart his position at Manchester United and return to his previous role as director of sport across Ineos. It is not yet clear what impact that will have on his input to decision-making at Ineos Grenadiers, but Domestique understands that Brailsford will not return to a day-to-day role with the cycling team.

A report in the Times on Wednesday has indicated that Brailsford’s tasks will include helping Geraint Thomas make the transition into a role in Ineos Grenadiers team management when he retires from racing at the end of this season. 

When Ineos owner Jim Radcliffe purchased of a minority stake in Manchester United in early 2024, Brailsford stepped away from his role as team principal at Ineos Grenadiers in order to take charge of football operations at Old Trafford. 

Manchester United endured a wretched 2024-25 season, placing a distant 15th in the Premier League and missing out on European football for next season after losing the Europa League final. 

That disappointment has prompted a change in the hierarchy at Manchester United, with Brailsford among those affected by the reshuffle. He is reportedly set to reduce his time commitment to football in order to return to a role overseeing Ineos’ interests across a range of sports, including cycling.

Radcliffe’s purchase of a stake at Manchester United saw cuts elsewhere in Ineos’ sports portfolio, with the petrochemicals company terminating its sponsorship of the New Zealand rugby team and of Ben Ainslie’s America’s Cup sailing team.

Ineos’ backing of the WorldTour cycling team remains in place, although the squad has fallen short of its previous levels of success in recent seasons, with UAE Team Emirates-XRG and Visma | Lease a Bike now the standard bearers in the Grand Tours and beyond.

Ineos Grenadiers (and previous iteration Team Sky) won seven out of eight Tours de France between 2012 and 2019, but they have struggled to make anything like the same impact in the race in the 2020s. Their best results came when Richard Carapaz and Geraint Thomas placed third overall in 2021 and 2022, respectively.

The loss of Tom Pidcock to Q36.5 during the off-season seemed indicative of the drift at Ineos Grenadiers, but the team has shown some flashes of encouragement thus far in 2025, with Filippo Ganna shining early in the Spring and Egan Bernal placing a gritty 7th at the Giro d’Italia, his best Grand Tour display since his life-threatening crash in 2022.

Carlos Rodríguez will lead the team at the Tour de France, where Thomas is due to make his final appearance in the race.

Thomas has confirmed his retirement at the end of the season, but he has been reluctant to divulge his plans for 2026 in detail. The Times reports that the Welshman is in line to join a management structure that is led by CEO John Allert and performance director Scott Drawer.

When Thomas’ friend and teammate Luke Rowe retired last season, he surprisingly opted for a role as a directeur sportif at Decathlon-AG2R rather than taking up a position at Ineos.

Directeur sportif Zak Dempster has said that he believes Thomas could slot into a variety of roles if he were to remain at Ineos next season. “I think he has got a lot to offer if he chooses to go into a role like that,” Dempster told Velo. “It’s really what role he wants to do. I’m sure he’ll be as good [in that] as he was as a cyclist.”