Iraola has lost the defensive core of the team that secured Premier League wins against Arsenal, Manchester City, Manchester United, Tottenham Hotspur and Newcastle United last season but, seated in a boardroom of a Chicago hotel, the Spanish coach is calmer than many of his peers might be in a similar situation.<\/p>\n
At Bournemouth, the club\u2019s structure works in a particular way, where Iraola sees his role as coaching the team and preparing the players, but recruitment is delegated to Tiago Pinto, the club\u2019s president of football operations, and technical director Simon Francis. Hence his \u201cassistant\u201d role.<\/p>\n
Already this summer, Bournemouth have secured replacements, signing goalkeeper Djordje Petrovic from Chelsea<\/a> for \u00a325million and left-back Adrien Truffert from Rennes for \u00a314.4m. This weekend, they agreed a \u00a330.3m deal to sign 24-year-old centre-back Bafode Diakite from Lille<\/a>, whose defence was bettered only by PSG in terms of goals against last season in the French top flight.<\/p>\n Last summer, Iraola lost centre-forward Dominic Solanke to Tottenham in a \u00a365m deal but his replacement Evanilson \u2014 signed for \u00a340.2m from Porto \u2014 scored 10 goals in his first season in the Premier League. The coach trusted his club to deliver the goods.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen we sign players, I try to help as much as I can,\u201d Iraola says.\u201dI give my opinion, especially the kind of player we need and the demands that will be needed for that position, but I don\u2019t control the market as well as they do.<\/p>\n \u201cObviously, if they ask me about a player in the Premier League, I will give a very precise and a very good evaluation, but for us, it\u2019s very difficult to sign players from the Premier League. I don\u2019t think we have signed anyone from the Premier League while I have been here. Most of the players we sign are from other leagues and a lot of them, I don\u2019t control.\u201d<\/p>\n Iraola oversees a Bournemouth training session at Flames Field, University of Chicago, last month (Getty Images)<\/p>\n Iraola is speaking English and when he says he does not \u201ccontrol\u201d the market in all leagues, he means it in the sense of not having full knowledge of every possible player in every league.<\/p>\n \u201cYou can watch a video and you will watch a game from a player, but probably this is not solid enough not to give a strong opinion,\u201d the 43-year-old explains.<\/p>\n The Athletic points out that many coaches are not so humble as to actually admit they do not know everything about the transfer market. Others are not prepared to delegate responsibilities to recruitment experts.<\/p>\n \u201cFor me, it is the truth,\u201d Iraola says. \u201cSometimes, I watch a player and I don\u2019t like what I see from the beginning \u2014 it may be in the way he moves or his reactions. I watch not only how a player is technically and physically. For example, one thing I look at is their reactions when the team scores a goal. I like it when players celebrate and they are very happy, even if they haven\u2019t been involved in anything for the goal and they haven\u2019t touched the ball.<\/p>\n \u201cI try to somehow get to people who know that player or know things about their character, or about their personal life. But I am not a specialist in signing players. Ninety-five per cent of the job is done by people who, in this case, know more than me.\u201d<\/p>\n When it comes to coaching, however, Iraola leaves no stone unturned. Last summer, after a 12th-placed finish in his first season at Bournemouth, Iraola challenged his players to aspire. In his debut season, Bournemouth did not win any Premier League matches against teams who finished in the top six of the table. He sat his players down in pre-season and gave them a new goal, insisting they were capable of overcoming the best teams in the league on one-off occasions.<\/p>\n They did a double over second-placed Arsenal, took four points from fifth-placed Newcastle, beat Manchester City at home and demolished Nottingham Forest, who spent much of the campaign in the European places, by a 5-0 scoreline. They also beat Manchester United 3-0 at Old Trafford for the second season in a row.<\/p>\n \u201cWe had very good wins against the best teams, apart from Liverpool, who is still the only team we don\u2019t find a way to get points against,\u201d says Iraola.<\/p>\n Iraola celebrates Bournemouth\u2019s 2-1 win over Arsenal at the Emirates Stadium (Glyn Kirk\/AFP via Getty Images)<\/p>\n While in the U.S. on pre-season, he spent time with staff at the NFL\u2019s Chicago Bears but he has also taken inspiration from studying the NBA. He spent a season at the end of his playing career in the MLS at New York City FC, where he followed the New York Giants in the NFL, but became a Minnesota Timberwolves fan due to his admiration for power forward Kevin Garnett<\/a>. It was a period where he explored the U.S. from East Coast to West Coast, also spending a summer in the Rockies and travelling to Vancouver in Canada.<\/p>\n \u201cI took a cruise to Alaska. There is just one highway!\u201d he laughs.<\/p>\n \u201cWith the NFL, we can learn from the methodology, particularly on set pieces.\u201d Iraola smiles. \u201cThey have this playbook and they have 200 to 300 plays. They put everything together so that 50 players are on the same page. They find a way to adjust from week to week, and nobody forgets what they have to do.\u201d<\/p>\n In soccer, Iraola says different players have different capacities for taking on instructions.<\/p>\n \u201cThere are players who know what they have to do at a set play and also know what the other 10 players have to do. Normally, the first two to three set plays are quite easy to remember, but when it gets a little bit messy and they start to get tired, they are not always able to do what they\u2019ve been told.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have to keep it much more simple than (NFL). We don\u2019t have the luxury of so many stops in play. If we were to have a timeout, football would lose a little bit of what it is. Football is different and unique because you cannot correct so much in real-time. It\u2019s a dynamic sport.\u201d<\/p>\n Iraola, above Andrea Pirlo and David Villa, at New York City FC in 2016 (Tim Clayton\/Corbis via Getty Images)<\/p>\n Is it scary as a coach when you prepare so much but then cede so much control?<\/p>\n \u201cYou have to accept it and trust players,\u201d Iraola answers. \u201cThere are players in your team who can correct the others in-game. Normally, these are midfielders or central defenders, who see more and correct how we are pressing or the spaces we are occupying. For us, it is guys like Ryan Christie, Lewis Cook, Tyler Adams<\/a> and Marco Senesi; players who are in the middle, who have experience and understand the game globally.\u201d<\/p>\n Iraola still watches the NBA, looking for tricks he can apply to his own team.<\/p>\n \u201cIn basketball, you can shoot, but what are the other players doing when a player shoots? How many do you send forward and leave behind so they are also ready for the defensive transitions?\u201d he says.<\/p>\n \u201cThen there are the lookouts; it is not just the one on the ball to think about, it\u2019s the others too. What are they doing and why are they not going to the rebound? Why are they opening the court with two guys?<\/p>\n \u201cBasketball is also about creating these mismatches. They are trying to force a match-up of our best player against their weakest player. If your strong player is the inside player in basketball, then you have to shoot threes, but then they may close everything on the inside and this will allow you go outside. You need to have different threats.\u201d<\/p>\n Kevin Garnett \u2014 an inspiration of Iraola\u2019s \u2014 playing for the Minnesota Timberwolves in February 2015 (David Sherman\/NBAE via Getty Images)<\/p>\n Iraola is used to thinking deeply about his own sport. During a 12-year spell at Athletic Club, where he made over 400 appearances, he played under Marcelo Bielsa. He recalls how the Argentine coach created training drills designed to produce outcomes that had been achieved during games by some of the world\u2019s best teams and players.<\/p>\n \u201cWe named exercises after players who we were watching on the video,\u201d Iraola explains. \u201cOne was Juan Roman Riquelme because it was something he had done at Boca Juniors. It makes it fun and relatable for players to use real examples, but you also need a mixture of everything. It cannot be only to try to copy what others are doing.\u201d<\/p>\n Iraola is still in his first decade of coaching, having previously worked in more humble environments at AEK Larnaca in Cyprus and second-tier Mirandes in Spain before arriving in the Spanish top flight by achieving promotion with Rayo Vallecano. In his first jobs, where clubs were less handsomely staffed, he would be extremely hands-on: \u201cIt was me cutting the videos, editing everything with the assistant coach, basically working without an analyst and doing everything.\u201d<\/p>\n Now he has five analysts at his disposal at Bournemouth.<\/p>\n \u201cEven now, with all our facilities and staff, I want to be the first one setting up and I am the one putting the cones out,\u201d says Iraola. \u201cI\u2019m measuring the distances. I feel more comfortable this way. I am learning how to use every person in the best way. At the beginning (at Bournemouth), I used to do post-match (analysis) and my own edit (of analysis videos).\u201d<\/p>\n Bournemouth\u2019s 56 points in the Premier League last season set a new club top-flight record (Ben Stansall\/AFP via Getty Images)<\/p>\n He is learning to delegate.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have time to produce more small details. We have to get into depth, into the micro of everything. Analysts are very underrated in clubs because they are the ones preparing for the next game, giving us all the information \u2014 not only about the opposition, but also about our own team. I am going to be the one taking the decisions, but they give me the starting point. When you have analysts who know what you are going to demand in every phase of the game, they save you a lot of time.\u201d<\/p>\n There is a good connection, too, with the club\u2019s ownership under U.S. billionaire Bill Foley, who also owns the Las Vegas Golden Knights in the NHL, as well as having investments in Auckland FC, Lorient and Hibernian in soccer.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/GettyImages-2226869730-scaled.jpg\")
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