Channel riders on the team – team leader Contador and his domestiques Benjamín Noval and Sérgio Paulinho would join Garmin–Slipstream for the Tour de France if Armstrong were to take over the Astana team. These problems seemed to be resolved, at least for the remainder of 2009, when the team's funding was resolved. However, the funding battle may have been merely a skirmish related to the underlying issue: control of the Astana team after the expiration of the two-year doping suspension of Alexander Vinokourov on 24 July 2009. On 2 July, Vinokourov stated that he would return to Astana, which he noted was "created for me and thanks to my efforts", when his suspension ended, and that he would ride for Astana in the 2009 Vuelta a España. He stated that he expected to reach agreement with Bruyneel about his return within the week, but that "if Bruyneel does not want me, it will be Bruyneel who is leaving the team." The next day, the French newspaper L'Équipe reported that the Kazakh Cycling Federation planned to fire Bruyneel, Armstrong, Leipheimer and many of the other riders and rebuild the team in the model of the old Liberty Seguros team, which was predominantly Spanish. The paper quoted the vice-president of the Kazakh federation as saying, "[Contador] will be our sole leader for years to come [and] will be able to pick out the riders he wants to ride with him. In our mind, the team will be composed of Spanish and Kazakh riders, including Alexander Vinokourov." On 21 July, with Contador, Armstrong and Klöden holding three of the top four places in the Tour de France, Bruyneel told Belgian channel VRT that Astana as currently constituted was "finished" and that he would be leaving the team, as Vinokourov and the Kazakh federation had discussed, at the end of the season. Despite the comments by Vinokourov and the Kazakhstan federation, Bruyneel and Vinokourov did not reach an agreement regarding Vinokourov's return to Astana for 2009, and the team submitted a preliminary roster to the 2009 Vuelta a España listing him only as a reserve. Finally, on 24 August, Astana announced that an agreement had been reached between Vinokourov and Bruyneel and that Vinokourov would rejoin the team for the start of the Vuelta. The next day, Armstrong announced that Bruyneel would take over Team RadioShack in 2010. 2010 The immediate result of