The guiding principles

Certainly Iraola speaks passionately and fascinatingly about how much he welcomes other people’s input and ideas even as a head coach. Yet his approach to the game has stayed the same – regardless of the league his team is playing in. That’s not to say his ideas are rigid. He is flexible and relishes fresh thinking, but his underpinning principles never change.

“If you see the first game that I coached, I remember very well. It was in Ireland, we were in the preliminary rounds in the Europa League with my Cypriot team [Larnaca], and I see a lot of things that I like today on my team. But it’s true that you learn to focus on the main things.

“When I started coaching, and I suppose a lot of coaches, when you are young, you want to do too many things too quick: ‘Okay, we are going to play this game with a 4-3-3 using the pockets and then we are facing another opposition next week and then I will use just wing backs, no winger, we put two inside and then we put a diamond in the middle in the second half.’ I started doing too many things because you want to try a lot of different things and after I think you realise that you have to control very well the things you do and you have to be a master in certain things and add adjustments here, different profile of players, different styles of the build-up, different styles on your press or press from the inside, press from the outside.

“Where I’ve been comfortable as a player is what I try to implement in my teams. We want our games to be high-tempo games, play as much as we can close to their goal, take risks on the ball”

“But I don’t think you have to change too many things and what you feel inside as a player, as a manager, I don’t think it’s going to change a lot during your coaching career.”

And those guiding principles were instilled in him as a player. He says that what is visible on the pitch in his Bournemouth team are what he enjoyed himself during his playing day.

“Where I’ve been comfortable as a player is what I try to implement in my teams. We want our games to be high-tempo games, play as much as we can close to their goal, take risks on the ball. Obviously you have to adapt, and now we are in a process where we are controlling a little bit more the games, adding a little bit more possession, but I don’t want to lose our main identity.

“We are a team that we do very well the things that everyone knows. We press very well, we recover the ball very high, we play quite vertical, and I wouldn’t like – because we need to improve in other areas – to lose our main things.”

He says those ideas have been present in all the teams he has coached thus far.

“I have one promotion that for me is very important, to La Liga, but I haven’t won a lot of things. But for me as a manager, for example, I say the worst season I’ve managed, we finished 12th. We’ve been a mid-table club mostly in most of my teams, but I’m very proud of [that], because the goals of the clubs that I’ve been coaching, every club would be very happy if we [had been told that we would finish 12th] before the season [started]. So at the end, it’s a matter of adjusting your expectations.

“For me, probably the only different season that I’ve been coaching has been Rayo in the second division, when we were a team that spent much more time in possession. We were the team supposed to control the games, attacking a lot of low blocks, attacking a lot of teams that they were ready to defend us, and sometimes we didn’t have the spaces that we can exploit now in the other seasons that I’ve been coaching where most of the teams had the urgency of beating us and having the three points.

“You have to adapt to your coaching career. You cannot draw your coaching career. You don’t know [if] the next chance, it will be in a team that is fighting for a title or is fighting for avoiding relegation.”

He says that much of his weekly schedule is spent planning for the next opponent, rather than relying on his team’s own strengths.

“We give a lot of importance to the opposition,” he says. “I would like to come here and say, ‘We value how we play, don’t care who we have in front [of us] and we are very good and we will control the game.’ But normally it doesn’t happen. So I think the opposition affects a lot how we prepare the week.”

Identifying success

That means success might look a little different depending on the context.

“I always believe [over] 38 games, the standings will put you in your place, whatever is your place. We don’t know what our place is this season with Bournemouth. We know last season, we finished ninth. But this season, we don’t know. We’ve made some changes.

“It’s going to be difficult to improve it, but we don’t really know. So let’s try to take every game as it comes, try to maximise our options.”

After Bournemouth’s great season in the Premier League in 2024-25, several key players moved on to their next opportunities, an inevitable part of life for the head coach of a club outside the very top echelons. It presented Iraola with a new challenge.

“There is a part where you don’t want to lose these players because they’ve been performing very well for us,” he admits. “But also there is a part where you want them to live in the sense – how are you going to say to Illia Zabarnyi, ‘No, don’t go to PSG,’ or to Dean Huijsen] ‘No, don’t go to Real Madrid’? There is a part where you think, ‘Okay, they deserve this chance to go and show themselves’.

“And also there is a part of challenge for us, like, ‘Okay, we have to do our job recruitment-wise.’ We were coming from seasons where the club had invested money, and it was probably the moment when we had to take the money back and make also a big profit so we can put ourselves in a good position for Financial Fair Play.

“So I understand the big picture of the club, and also it’s a challenge as a manager – ‘Okay, with new players, we have to make it work again.’

“We were playing the other day with Veljko Milosavljevic, who is 18. Alex Jimenez is 20. And you have to accept they are going to make mistakes like we’ve done, every one of us, when we are coaching, when we are playing - but it’s the only way. Making those mistakes is the only way to learn. It’s very difficult. The ideal thing is learn while you are winning and you are not making mistakes, but normally at the top level, this doesn’t happen. So you try to learn quickly because there is not a lot of time in the Premier League.

“But I’m happy that we are in this process. It still will take time. But I think everyone is ready to learn, is happy to receive new information and also the help from the players that have been with us [over] these three seasons.”

The importance of the team

And when players do move on to another opportunity, Iraola takes care to remind them of something he learnt himself in Bilbao, at Athletic Club at the start of his own playing career.

“They have to thank a lot their team-mates. There are a lot of players that are more veteran that will not have these chances, not signing for these kind of clubs, but they’ve been part of the process.

“I always tell them, no, only the collective success will give you individual rewards, because if we are not doing well collectively, you will look a lot worse because we will not be giving importance to the things that you are doing because we [will be] at the bottom of the table.

“If collectively we have good results, we are playing well, normally every one of you will look better, even if It’s not about just the goals or the assists”

“Everything starts with collective success. When players start to think more selfishly, more in their numbers, their goals, their assists, I think we become worse, because at the end, you don’t give the importance to the important things.

“If collectively we have good results, we are playing well, normally every one of you will look better, even if it’s not about just the goals or the assists. The media, I think, focus a lot on the numbers, but people that are working for other clubs that are watching you, they are scouting you, they are not stupid. They see every run you make backwards. They see every time you help your teammate closing inside. They see every time you run to the space, even not receiving the ball.

“So I think [players] have to realise that this is about the collective mentality.”