Sunweb team manager Ivan Spekenbrink said that after the WorldTour team lost its Grand Tour leader before the 2020 season and the 28-year-old moved to rival team Jumbo Visma of the Netherlands, "There is life after Tom Dumoulin There is," he told Dutch media.

Spekenbrink told de Volkskrant last week that the team had recovered from the departure of big-name players like Marcel Kittel and John Degenkolb from the team in the past and would do so again this time.

The 43-year-old also said that he learned of Dumoulin's desire to join Jumbo Visma through a report in the Dutch newspaper Algemeen Dagblad just before this year's Tour de France, in which the injured Dumoulin was unable to participate.

"I wanted to use Tom again next year to win the Tour," Spekenbrink admitted when asked if he had tried to keep Dumoulin. But it soon became clear that he had already made his decision."

"Tom no longer had the feeling that he could extract the maximum from us. The rubber was stretched. I mean, we had to go to the other 17 teams [on the World Tour]."

Spekenbrink told Volkskrant.nl that the team would just "keep doing what we're doing" until Dumoulin recovered from his departure.

"It will come back, but not in 2020," he said.

"When Marcel Kittel, the best sprinter in the world, left [at the end of 2015], we got back on our feet, and we're going to keep doing what we're doing.

"When John Degenkolb, one of the best classic riders, left" -- ahead of the 2017 season -- "we recovered. It will happen again now. There is life after Tom."