By a highly anticipated arrival of Peter Sagan to Tinkoff-Saxo announced last week, team owner Oleg Tinkov confirmed his never hidden ambitions to build the best squad in the discipline. The Russian oligarch and cycling enthusiast acknowledged, however, that realization of this plan requires more professional approach than just filling a roster with stars thanks to impressive budget.

As a successful businessman, Tinkov admitted that marketing value of Sagan’s arrival is just as important for team’s development as a sporting one. The Russian oligarch expects the 24-year old Slovak to finally claim his first cycling monument next season after being provided with a reliable support, but in the same time insists that Alberto Contador will remain a captain of the squad as their leader for Grand Tour events.

"He's a great athlete, a nice person and has the biggest marketing value in the sport," Tinkov told Cyclingnews, explaining why he outbid rivals teams to secure Sagan's signature for the next three season.

"Contador remains our team captain because he's our Grand Tour team leader, but Peter has huge charisma too. Of course he needs to win the Classics and win his first monument Classic, because he's never won one. But I'm sure he'll win with our team. Everybody saw what happened with Peter this spring. He lost a lot of races because the team wasn't strong enough. Our team is much stronger and we can help him a lot. With the other riders we're signing, we can play the game, play the cards with two great riders."

Obviously, Tinkov didn’t reveal on what salary both parties agreed in the lucrative contract, but admitted that he wouldn’t spare money in order to secure a valuable rider for his team.

"The numbers I've seen in the media are just crazy money but of course the best riders don't come cheap," Tinkov acknowledged.

"Nothing is cheap if it's good. I'm modest, I don’t have a fancy villa but I'm ready to pay to have the best riders in my team. I'm convinced it’s a good deal for Peter and for us. We've not only got a great rider, we've connected with an army of great fans and we've secured a lot of marketing opportunities. In fact we've leveraged some excellent technical sponsors which we will announce soon."

With the likes of Daniele Benatti, Matteo Tossato, Michael Morkov or Matti Breschel, the Russian team is already capable of providing the 24-year old Slovak with required support, but according to Tinkov they’re yet to announce several major arrivals for 2015 season, including significant strengthening to their classics unit.

Even though a rumored move of Team Sky Edvald Boasson Hagen hasn’t been confirmed, the Russian oligarch hinted that we should expect arrivals or several riders from the British team.

"It's strange because we have three or four guys from Team Sky who are coming to us," Tinkov hinted mischievously.

"It seems like we're on an opposite trajectory. We're going up and they're going down. So if I were him, I wouldn't jump ship. But it's his decision. He's Irish and so maybe he feels better on an Anglo-Saxon team."

The Tinkoff-Saxo owner was consequently emphasizing his ambitions to build the strongest cycling squad from the beginning of the 2014 season, and once again acknowledged that it requires much bigger effort than just filling team’s roster with classy riders.

"My goal is not to create the best team in the world. That's easy, anyone can be the best team in the world if you have the money and just buy the riders. My goal is to build a new, modern team, based on new technologies, new nutrition programmes, new recovery programmes, new training methods, and data coaching," Tinkov said.

"We've signed some of the best coaches in the sport and some of the best trainers from other sports. Our team will be strong not only because of the riders but because we'll have a new generation of directeurs sportif who know how to work with data and watts."

"Dave Brailsford is a very talented manager. I've only met him once and so can't really judge him, but I respect him and what he's done," Tinkov said.

"Team Sky is a very good team. Of course they've made mistakes too. I'm not going to tell you because otherwise they will change and I don’t want them to change quickly. I want us to move ahead of them."

Tinkov also reflected on an enormous blow he received while seeing Contador crashing out of the Tour de France and confessed that he learned an important lesson on that day. The Russian squad’s owner admitted, however, that he was pleased with how his team bounced back from disappointment after losing their leader, and  - in his own opinion – a certain winner of this year’s edition of la Grande Boucle.

"Nibali is a great campione, I like him as a person and as a rider. He deserved to win the 2014 Tour de France but Froome and Alberto weren't there…" Tinkov said.

"Now cycling is all about numbers and big data. Watts per kilogramme and stuff. We know Rafal's numbers, we know Nibali's numbers more or less because they raced together and we know Alberto's numbers. With the numbers that we have, we believe Alberto would have been three minutes ahead. Of course it's all virtual and so the debate goes nowhere, but we believe Alberto would have won and won quite easily."

"It taught me that nothing comes easy. It would have been nice to have bought the team in December, win the Tour de France in July and to be kings. But cycling is not easy," he said.

"It was one of the hardest times in my life because when you invest so much money, so much energy and so much dedication, then all of a sudden, a single rider crashes and it's gone. It was a huge shock and it was a huge blow. In a way we lost the season but we fought back nicely and I'm proud of the guys."