Despite Lampre-Merida not having picked their squad for the Tour de France, Filippo Pozzato believes he will be excluded from the team that will head to Yorkshire for the Grand Depart in less than a week.

He has been training with the Italian National Team and he states that coach Davide Cassani and Giancarlo Ferratti have more faith in him than Lampre do.

 "It gave me morale and made me feel like I have at least this team that believes in me," Pozzato said. To Gazzetta dello Sport, the Italian said he was being excluded from the Tour de France and would focus on the world championships with the national team.

But Lampre manager Brent Copeland told Tuttiobiciweb.it that Pozzato was still in the running and will be until the final decision is made either later today or tomorrow.

“I remind everyone, in particular Pippo, that our list for the Tour is still open to 11 riders," Copeland said. "We decided to wait for the Italian national championships before making the team official, because we were waiting for a signal from Pozzato, a sign we didn’t have at the Dauphiné and Giro de Slovénie. There isn’t any preclusion, if there were, we would have announced the team days ago, and Pippo knows that. We aren't making this decision lightly. We don’t easily exclude an experienced rider like Pozzato.”

Cassani also repeated Copeland’s statement in an interview with Gazzetta. “I told [Pippo] in front of everyone that, ‘if you were going slow, you would not be here ... I know that you are the first one to exclude yourself. You still have time to be a part of the team and you can still do something important.’”

Pozzato has struggled in recent years, taking his last win in the WorldTour race GP Ouest France Plouay (or just GP Plouay) last season and third place in the Tour of Japan prologue being his best result in 2014.