Liverpool’s new head coach has never lifted a major trophy either as a player or as a manager, but since a sliding-doors moment in 2019, his climb to the top has been striking.
The compact O Vao ground lies only a few yards from the beach in Coruxo, on Spain’s west coast. Close to the Portuguese border and just outside Vigo, the stadium has a capacity of only 1,500, yet it staged what was arguably the most important match of Andoni Iraola’s managerial career.
In December 2019, Iraola was in charge of Mirandes, having been appointed shortly after their promotion to the Segunda Division. It was his first managerial role in Spain after he had been dismissed only eight months into his spell with Cypriot side AEK Larnaca.
The beginning at Mirandes was far from smooth as well. The Burgos province club, not far from Iraola’s native Basque Country, won only one of their first 10 league matches under him and sat second from bottom in the table. Even Racing Santander, who eventually finished adrift at the foot of the standings, thrashed them 4-0.
Just as results had begun to improve, Mirandes travelled west to play Coruxo, from Spain’s 80-team third tier split into four regional divisions, in the first round of the Copa del Rey. As stoppage time approached, Coruxo were 4-3 ahead and on the brink of a huge shock. Then came a disputed penalty equaliser, and in the furious scenes that followed, the home side had two players sent off before Mirandes went on to win 5-4 after extra time.
“Total madness,” was how one media outlet summed up a match that swung wildly, much like Liverpool’s UEFA Cup final against Alaves in 2001. “Coruxo deserved to win,” Iraola admitted afterwards.
Only six weeks later, Mirandes had reached the Copa del Rey semi-finals for just the second time in club history, having beaten La Liga sides Celta Vigo, Sevilla and Villarreal on the way. That cup run drew attention to Iraola’s emerging ability as a manager, including from the man who would play a key role in bringing him to Anfield this summer.
Michael Edwards, Liverpool’s chief executive of football at the time Iraola was appointed in June, had been aware of him for years. Edwards had previously tried to bring Iraola to the club as far back as 2013, when the Basque was a 31-year-old right-back at Athletic Bilbao. Iraola spent almost his entire playing career there, making more than 500 appearances.
Liverpool were in the middle of their Premier League title challenge under Brendan Rodgers, in the season that would end with Steven Gerrard’s slip against Chelsea, and were exploring extra competition for Glen Johnson at full-back. Edwards, then the club’s director of technical performance, asked scout Julian Ward to get in touch with Iraola’s representatives. Ward watched him captain Athletic Bilbao to a November victory over Malaga, after which Liverpool made their interest known with a view to a January move.
Iraola was interested and gave the decision serious thought before choosing to sign a new contract with Athletic Bilbao. Later that season, when Johnson got injured, Jon Flanagan ended up filling in and even received praise from Cafu. When Iraola informed Liverpool of his decision, he unusually sent a letter thanking them for their interest. In it, he said he hoped to play at Anfield one day, praised Johnson’s quality, and joked that he was surprised they still wanted him after watching the Malaga match, because he did not think he had played particularly well. Edwards valued the gesture and continued to monitor Iraola’s progress once he moved into management.
Mirandes did not, of course, go on to win the 2020 Copa del Rey, losing in the semi-finals to Real Sociedad, featuring Martin Odegaard, Alexander Isak and Mikel Oyarzabal. The one obvious gap in Iraola’s otherwise impressive CV remains the absence of a major trophy, whether as a player or a manager, despite coming remarkably close on several occasions.
Under Marcelo Bielsa, Iraola was part of the Athletic Bilbao team that reached the 2012 Europa League final, beating Manchester United at Old Trafford along the way. But in the final in Bucharest, Atletico Madrid defeated them 3-0. “I don’t know when an opportunity like this will happen to us again,” Iraola said then. Athletic Bilbao have not reached another European final since.
Iraola played in five finals during his career and lost every one of them. The other four all came against Barcelona, one in the Spanish Super Cup and three in the Copa del Rey. By the last of those, the 2015 Copa del Rey final against Barcelona’s celebrated MSN attack, Iraola had clearly had enough, especially when Neymar produced a rainbow flick late on to underline victory. “I didn’t find it elegant or sporting,” the defender said.
At the very top level, he remained a nearly man. Iraola won seven caps for Spain in an era when the national team collected three trophies, but his debut came a month after their Euro 2008 triumph, when he was already 26. He was not included in Spain’s victorious 2010 World Cup squad and then missed Euro 2012 through injury just when it looked as though he might make the cut.
Management, however, gave him a fresh route to the summit of the game.
At first glance, being sacked only eight months into his first job looked like a clear setback, but the truth was more complicated. At AEK Larnaca, Iraola made an immediate mark by guiding the club through three qualifying rounds into the Europa League group stage. In the league, they won six of their opening eight matches, but then failed to win any of the next seven, and he was dismissed.
“He did a fantastic job because we got to the Europa League group stage,” French striker Florian Taulemesse told NC-Network, also praising one of the staff members who has since followed Iraola to Anfield. “He had a great strength and conditioning coach with him, Pablo de la Torre – the way he wanted us to play, we had to be in peak condition.
“Iraola was all about the high press, then every time we recovered the ball, he wanted to see vertical passes, not backward passes. He encouraged us to cross the ball from wide areas and shoot at the first opportunity. High press, recover the ball, create openings, shoot – do that again and again; attack, attack! Our wingers were fast, making us dangerous in transition.
“While it was his first experience as a head coach, he wasn’t anxious. He was a calm coach who gave us a lot of confidence. But it became difficult mixing domestic football with European competition, because we were a Cypriot club with a small budget. We got a few injuries to key players and didn’t have much depth. In Cyprus, three bad results get a manager sacked.”
That was not how things unfolded at Mirandes, where he overcame that slow beginning and led the club to 11th place in the Segunda Division, alongside that run to the Copa del Rey semi-finals, before deciding to leave when his one-year contract expired.
He then moved to Rayo Vallecano, who had finished only four places above Mirandes but had a history of returning to the top flight from time to time, often punching above their weight at a stadium with a capacity of under 15,000. Within a year, Iraola had taken Rayo back to La Liga through the play-offs.
The upward trend continued. In their first season back in La Liga, Rayo finished 12th and also reached the Copa del Rey semi-finals. As with Mirandes, it was only the second time in the club’s history that they had gone that far in the competition, and they had also come close to a humiliating first-round exit, surviving this time thanks to a penalty shootout win at fifth-tier Guijuelo.
Rayo also made a mark by beating Barcelona both home and away, and in the following season they took another four points off the Camp Nou club. That made Iraola only the sixth manager in La Liga history to avoid defeat in each of his first four matches against Barcelona, and the first to do so since Javier Clemente in the early 1980s. It was some form of revenge for all those cup final defeats to Barcelona during his playing days.
“We weren’t going to take the ball away from Barça the whole time, so we had to choose what to cover and direct the pressure towards their creators, and who was going to receive the ball,” Iraola explained after the fourth of those matches, a 2-1 home win at Vallecas. “We didn’t let them have the structure they wanted, and in the transitions we were dangerous.”
Iraola is still unbeaten against Barcelona, having left Rayo at the end of his contract that summer after improving their league finish again to 11th. In February of that year, Leeds had failed in their effort to appoint him because Rayo did not want to release him before his deal ended. West Ham were also linked, but it was Bournemouth who secured him after surprisingly dismissing Gary O’Neil to make room for his arrival, a decision that invited comparisons with Southampton sacking Nigel Adkins in 2013 to bring in Mauricio Pochettino after the Argentine had impressed at Espanyol.
The outcome was similar as well. Like Pochettino at St Mary’s, Iraola delivered steady progress at the Vitality Stadium, even though he again started slowly and failed to win any of his first nine league matches. Bournemouth had finished 15th in the season before he arrived, but under Iraola they climbed to 12th, then ninth, and then sixth last season to qualify for Europe for the first time in their history. Once more, he chose to move on when his contract ran out.
At that stage, his next destination was uncertain. Manchester United and Chelsea were both linked but chose other options, while Crystal Palace were also monitoring the situation before Liverpool’s decision to sack Arne Slot opened the path to Anfield. While Chelsea preferred Xabi Alonso to Iraola, Liverpool went the other way and selected Iraola ahead of Alonso, believing he was the better match for the heavy-metal football they wanted to restore after so much success under Jurgen Klopp.
Iraola is Liverpool’s first Spanish manager since Rafa Benitez, although former Reds defender John Arne Riise believes the two are not especially alike. “They’re very different characters when it comes to how they communicate with players and how they act on the bench,” said the Norwegian, who played under Benitez. “I’ve watched Iraola on the touchline and he looks more energetic, more involved with his body language.
“Rafa was much more about strict tactics and a bit more cold-faced – I mean nothing bad by that because I had a great relationship with him, but I think players today will have more close, one-on-one conversations with Iraola than we typically had with Rafa.
“I liked the way Iraola’s Bournemouth played by attacking with real pace and power, and how quickly they transitioned forward. I also loved the way they really sprinted back to support the team and stay compact the moment they lost the ball. It was similar to what we did during my first few seasons under Rafa, when we were challenging for leagues – quick transitions, powerful forward movement, intense tracking back. That was lacking last season.
“I’d like to see more enthusiasm and energy on the bench to engage with the fans and the players, as well – Arne Slot was very reserved on the touchline. You want that Jurgen Klopp style where he gets the crowd and the players going. It’s important for Iraola to show he has that kind of passion.”
If Neymar appears and starts pulling off a few rainbow flicks, that might well stir some emotions in a man who has never won a major trophy, but who has now taken his managerial gifts to a club where he has a genuine opportunity to change that. This is Iraola’s ninth season as a manager, and in each of the previous eight, his team finished higher in the league than it had the season before. If he can continue that pattern at Anfield, success may not be far away.
