Andoni Iraola: 'When there are 10 players behind the ball I don't feel very comfortable' | Bournemouth

TOAfter a relentless start, Andoni Iraola has enjoyed an eye-catching first season in the first division, taking Bournemouth to their best points tally in the division, with a clear chance of finishing in the first half heading into the final day. His work, which imposes an aggressive and exciting style on a dynamic team, has earned him a nomination for the coach of the season award, as well as a new contract. As his first anniversary in charge approaches next month, the closest thing to a complaint – as an avid cyclist – is the lack of mountainous terrain in Dorset. “The longest is 200 meters,” he says with a smile, raising and then lowering his right hand. “It stops just when you're starting.”

Raised in the Basque Country, the cycling heart of Spain, Iraola has long been fascinated by the endurance and precision that are the crux of racing on two wheels. During pre-season in Marbella last summer he was glued to the Tour de France at dinner and it was similar in his playing days, most of which were spent at his boyhood club, Athletic Bilbao, which he captained to the final of the Europa League with Marcelo Bielsa in 2011. -12. The pressures have changed since then.

“I enjoy it a little more as a coach than as a player,” he says. “I played (almost) my entire career at Athletic – it was my club – and I probably gave too much importance to everything, to every detail, to every performance; I felt a lot of responsibility. Now I understand it better, we are not so important and I think I suffer a little less.”

This week, at the end of the days of preparation to play against Chelsea on Sunday, he tried to catch up on the Giro d'Italia. “(Tadej) Pogacar is destroying everyone, as expected,” he says. “I love this sport and it is a tradition in the Basque Country. Everyone travels to see the different stages of the Tour, the Vuelta (to Spain); We have Itzulia at home and I try to follow it.”

For Iraola, 41, cycling is also a rich source of intrigue in terms of cross-pollination. “I think there are a lot of sports where they are ahead of us in certain areas and where we can take advantage of things,” he says, also citing basketball and the NFL. He knew some of the staff at Euskaltel-Euskadi, the Basque cycling team famous for their orange jerseys, and met Mauro Gianetti after declaring the team director and CEO of UAE Team Emirates his favorite cyclist in an interview while he was a player in Bilbao. . Later, Gianetti approached and gave Iraola a shirt from the team he was managing at the time, Saunier Duval-Prodir, and introduced Matxin to Joxean Fernández, the director of the UAE team, for whom Pogacar races.

Connections with those at the forefront of elite sport have led to interesting conversations. “We like to share things, share the methodology they use, the process they use, to show it to the players,” says Iraola. “For example, discipline in cycling is so important… your body fats, your training, the kilometers (ridden), everything is very measured to try to find the peak of your form in the season. It's very interesting, especially sports science. As footballers, and if I consider myself when I was a player, we are not in so much detail: (look) at everything you eat, how many hours you sleep. “I like this process.”

Bournemouth monitors body fat, like many clubs, with small fines if players are overweight. They also place emphasis on repetition of high-intensity efforts and the speed at which players react. It's no surprise, then, that only Everton have recovered more loose balls in the league this season. These could be details straight out of Bielsa's playbook.

“If you want to attack spaces, be aggressive with the press; You are not giving the players much time to rest and with Marcelo it was the same,” says Iraola. “I played with him for two seasons and he was very demanding. He'll only get there if he trains the same way and everyone is really committed to it. “You need players to buy into the idea and I feel like we have this.”

The only member of staff who followed Iraola to Bournemouth was Pablo de la Torre, the fitness coach who worked with him in his first managerial role at AEK Larnaca and Rayo Vallecano, whom Iraola left for England. How important is athletics to implementing your style? “It is key because we try to play with a fast pace. We don't want the games to stop and you not have time to recover. I always say: 'You have to ask for the ball when you're tired.' If you're waiting to rest before calling for the ball again or running into space, anyone can do it. But you are a Premier League player and if you are tired, this is the time to put pressure on your opponent, when he is also tired, and try to break him. To achieve this you have to be in your best physical shape.”

When Iraola learned of his appointment as coach of the season, he reacted in his office by insisting on Unai Emery's case, and he does the same here. “I am very proud to be in the same place with Mikel (Arteta), Unai, Pep (Guardiola), Jürgen Klopp… some coaches who are clearly above me, and I think it is good that other clubs besides the four “Sean Dyche and Gary O'Neil, who are not fighting for European places, have had good seasons and I think it is good that the league recognizes other clubs. But for me Unai should win it. He has been really incredible since he arrived at Aston Villa. The team has been improving, they have been very close to a European final and winning. in the champions league “It is a great achievement for Villa.”

Iraola, who left law school to become a professional soccer player and has read all the The works of Haruki Murakami., is warm, attractive and modest. On some occasions he belittles the merits of his playing career, which he began playing on San Sebastián's La Concha beach with Arteta and Xabi Alonso, then together in the local reserve team, Antiguoko. He ended up living in Manhattan, playing for New York City, at the base of the midfield under Patrick Vieira, who got Iraola thinking about management. “Playing in a midfield three, behind (Andrea) Pirlo and (Frank) Lampard… we suffered when we didn't have the ball because we didn't have the legs, but tactically and with the ball we could do a lot of things in MLS.”

He laughs. Even at the end of a grueling season, it's clear that Iraola is enjoying life in the dugout, based on the south coast. He has explored the countryside around the corner with his wife, his nine-year-old daughter and four-year-old son, visiting the New Forest and taking the ferry from Sandbanks to Swanage. As for that contract extension until 2026, after billionaire owner Bill Foley began talks a fortnight ago, he speaks of the less prominent value of faith in the formula. Outgoing Bournemouth manager Richard Hughes, who joins Liverpool next monthHe did his homework on how Iraola's teams played historically and their attacking philosophy.

Bournemouth didn't win a league game until last October, but his slow start led Iraola to exaggerate his methods. “In Spain we were a very, very aggressive team, with very high pressure, but we had to be even more aggressive because the standards here are really high. All teams are really trying to get the ball back as high as they can. We had to reinforce our message, take even more risks, play with an even higher bar because otherwise we couldn't make a difference. When I'm on the bench and everyone is in a low block, very compact, with 10 players behind the ball, I don't feel very comfortable.”

Despite starting the league season with a nine-game winless streak, no one panicked, least of all Iraola. The staff speaks of a character who unwaveringly believes in his formula. “I'm used to renewing at the end of each year: 'you're happy, I'm happy, okay, let's keep it up',” he says. “I don't want any party to make the decision to continue just because I have a contract. No, it's because we truly believe it's best for both parties. I have to thank the players because they continued to trust in what we were doing. “I never felt like they wanted to play in a different way.”