Liverpool hired Andoni Iraola as manager on Thursday, turning to the former Bournemouth coach whose intense and heavy-pressing playing approach resembles the ideology that brought the team so much success under former Anfield favorite Jürgen Klopp.
The 43-year-old Spaniard, who has signed a deal for an undisclosed length, left his job at Bournemouth at the end of the recently completed season after a three-year spell that boosted his reputation.
The unheralded south-coast team finished sixth in the Premier League, going unbeaten in its last 18 games, and qualified for Europe for the first time in its history.
Iraola replaces Arne Slot, who was fired by Liverpool last Saturday following a troubled second year in charge after emulating the likes of José Mourinho, Carlo Ancelotti and Antonio Conte by winning the Premier League title in his first season. That took Liverpool to a record-tying 20 English league championships.
Iraola said he was joining “a special club.”
“You don’t need a lot of things to get attracted by Liverpool. Liverpool is Liverpool,” he said.
“But obviously the atmosphere, the supporters, the club, the players, the chance for me to coach top-level players, the chance to fight for titles. I think it cannot be more attractive than this. It’s difficult to find it. So, really excited to start.”
(Photo by Andrew Powell/Liverpool FC via Getty Images)
Concerns about Liverpool’s style of play under Slot — the team lost 12 games in a disappointing title defense — were laid bare in a critical social-media post by departing superstar Mohamed Salah that called for the club to “go back to being the heavy metal attacking team that opponents fear.” Tellingly, it was liked by a number of current Liverpool players.
In going for Iraola, who likes a hard-running and pressing approach previously favored by the popular Klopp in his trophy-laden spell at Liverpool from 2015-2024, the club’s leadership appears to have taken Salah’s message on board.
The appointment — overseen by Liverpool sporting director Richard Hughes, who was working at Bournemouth when Iraola was hired there in 2023 — doesn’t come without risk, though.
Iraola has never managed a club anywhere as big as Liverpool, with his only jobs before Bournemouth coming in brief spells in charge at AEK Larnaca in Cyprus and second-tier Mirandes in Spain before a three-year stint at Rayo Vallecano.
He also has never won a major trophy, or had to balance the demands of elite domestic and European competitions.
However, Liverpool wanted a manager who will play a more “aggressive and urgent” style of soccer and Iraola fits the bill, even if his off-field persona — unassuming, reserved — couldn’t be more different to that of the more outgoing and in-your-face Klopp.
Iraola takes over a team in transition, with the offseason departures of Salah and Andy Robertson leaving Virgil van Dijk and Alisson Becker as the only remaining senior members of the brilliant team that Klopp led to the Champions League title in 2019 and the Premier League trophy the following year.
Liverpool spent an unprecedented $570 million to strengthen the squad in the last offseason but only finished in fifth place in an underwhelming Premier League title defense to squeeze into the Champions League, a competition Iraola has never managed in.
Iraola is the latest coach born in Spain’s Basque region to take over a top English club, following in the footsteps of Mikel Arteta (Arsenal), Unai Emery (Aston Villa) and most recently Xabi Alonso (Chelsea).
Reporting by The Associated Press.
