I enthusiastically congratulate Ciccone, Velasco, and Bagioli. So, I immediately resign from the new cycling game: when he wins, Pogačar is Merckx, when he comes second, oh no, Merckx, slow down with the words, let's not blaspheme, we're on two different planets.

Honestly, I'm fed up, I'm stepping out of the debate I essentially started. It's no longer a fun game. It's like the game of goose, always starting from square one. When he dominates, and fine, granted, he resembles Merckx, but-if-however, when he comes second, the deafening chorus of those laughing and shouting "Merckx? Really?". I don't even want to specify anymore that the comparison with Merckx should never be about the number of victories, but about the way of these victories, like voracious and insatiable masters, on all terrains, in line and in stages, climbs and descents, racing everywhere from January to October. Nor is it necessary to empty the bag every time, which after this latest triumph lays out on the table the 9 Monuments, third Liège-Bastogne-Liège in four years (we've understood by now, give him a Redoute and you can lower the shutters), 95 total victories, with the 2024 World Championship, two Tours of Flanders (2023 and 2025), three Liège (2021, 2024, 2025) and four consecutive Tours of Lombardy, from 2021 to 2024. Plus the 2024 Giro d'Italia and three Tours de France: 2020, 2021, and 2024. With a detail that is by no means secondary: when he loses, you still find him on the podium. And anyway, any fan can remember that not even Merckx had a hundred percent record, just ask Ocaña or Gimondi who occasionally beat him...

No use, enough, it no longer makes sense to bring up the Pogačar story every time. Not even watching races anymore just to see what happens to him, if at Roubaix he falls and gets a puncture, it's still proof that he's not perfect, he can be beaten, he's vulnerable, he has limits, sure, let's not call him Merckx.

All of this is truly tiresome. If it can help end this here, I'll publicly say that Pogačar is not Merckx and that after all he's a half-rider. I'll do more: I'll publicly admit that we are not facing one of the phenomena that fall in cycling every fifty years, but that these days Pogačar is simply the one passing by the monastery. In the absence of better, we'll make do with dried figs and be content with little. We are not like the people of the seventies, who when Merckx won in a certain way called him the Cannibal and made him an immortal myth. We are not that naive and gullible. Before mythologizing Pogačar, we want him to at least walk on water.