#Letakan iklan disini
Football Jun 13, 2026

Liverpool: Andoni Iraola can make success of step up from Bournemouth at Anfield

👤
By Admin
Sports Journalist
Liverpool: Andoni Iraola can make success of step up from Bournemouth at Anfield

Andoni Iraola will face a "completely different" challenge at Liverpool - but after his "small scale" success on the south coast he is primed to bring his "magic" with him to Anfield.

That's the verdict of Your Site News reporter Mark McAdam, who has covered Iraola's rapid rise at Bournemouth first-hand.

and in the special, McAdam outlined the enormity of the step-up the Spaniard is facing.

He also explained why he believes Iraola is well prepared for the demands of the role...

"I think he's ready but ultimately we don't we don't know how ready he is because everything is completely different," said McAdam.

"I walk into a Bournemouth press conference on a Friday and there will be four or five journalists there. He's going to walk into a Liverpool press conference and suddenly he's going to be faced with 25, 30, 40 journalists maybe even more on a Champions League night.

"The intensity, the scrutiny… he can drive in and out of the Bournemouth training ground and there's no one there that wants a signature. He goes into the Vitality Stadium and he'll do a couple of selfies. This isn't the case with Liverpool. There will be hundreds of fans that are clamouring to get that moment, to get that selfie, to get that autograph and the journalists will be asking the questions.

"He's going to feel like he is the central cog of that whole city whilst he's the head coach at the football club.

"It's going to be completely different. He's very down to earth, he's very humble he's quite a quiet, shy guy but is he ready and right for it? Yeah!

"I've been lucky enough to watch him at close quarters and be hugely impressed with what he's done on a small scale. The big question is can he translate that to one of the biggest challenges in world football."

As well as the enormity of the club, Iraola will also be working with high-profile players with different demands to some he may have experienced at Bournemouth. It will be a test of Iraola's man-management technique he has used so far.

"The personalities are going to be very different, the egos are going to be very different," said McAdam. "You're not walking into a dressing room filled with young players that have ambitions to play Champions League football or to get to bigger clubs - and that's the philosophy and the model of Bournemouth: buy young, buy as cheap as possible and then say, 'We'll give you the platform to develop you, improve you and then send you on to Liverpool, PSG, Real Madrid' as they have done recently.

"Now you're at a destination club. It doesn't really get much better than when you're at those big clubs because they're the ones that are expected to challenge in every single competition.

"So Iraola now has a very different mindset that he has to have.

"Interestingly with Iraola, he doesn't have individual relationships with players. He lets his coaching staff speak to players. He obviously speaks to them on the training pitch, he does his presentations but at Bournemouth Tommy Elphick, Shaun Cooper and Pablo de la Torre have the relationships with the players. They know what's going on with the players' wives, girlfriends, kids, families, what's happening off the pitch.

"They do all of that work and then feed into Iraola, he will assimilate that and work out what he wants to do but he doesn't have that relationship perhaps like Jurgen Klopp would. So he's a very different style of man manager and obviously it's completely worked at Bournemouth but again it's one of the many questions that will now be posed - can that style of management translate into a club like Liverpool where you've got players that have won the Premier League, you've got players that have competed in the Champions League, competed at the highest level for their national side?

"[The Liverpool players] are not someone that is on a little bit of money that's desperate for the chance to improve and develop. You've got someone that's already been there done it."

Iraola's style of play could also have an important impact off the pitch, too, rebuilding the connection between Liverpool supporters and their team.

By ramping up the excitement levels for supporters, Iraola can build a winning formula fuelled by passion in the Anfield stands and on the famous pitch.

"The biggest compliment I can pay Andoni Iraola is he made Bournemouth fans fall in love with the team," said McAdam. "They loved going to watch games at the Vitality Stadium. They saw the identity, they saw the philosophy and even at the beginning where things weren't going so well and results weren't there, they could see what was happening and they knew it just needed time.

"If Liverpool fans love going to Anfield, they are in love with their team, they love the style of football, they love what they're seeing, then they will go, 'OK, we can see what's going on here. We might need to give a little bit of time to go where we want to go in terms of winning nine out of 10 games and challenging for the Premier League, but I am starting to fall in love with this group of players and this philosophy'.

"That's what Iraola did at Bournemouth. He built a really clever group of players, he built bridges with the supporters and everyone just loved him. In the end, you've got Bournemouth fans going into games against Liverpool and Arsenal and Man City thinking, 'We'll win today and even if we don't, I know that we're going to be brilliant to watch'.

"If Iraola can bring that little bottle of magic that he had with Bournemouth and take it to Liverpool and create that atmosphere... then the rest will start to follow.

"And I do hate to compare it and mention Jurgen Klopp but that's exactly what Jurgen did when he arrived at Liverpool. That emotional connection is something that Liverpool fans have been missing, certainly this season because that emotional connection was missing between Liverpool fans and Arne Slot and that didn't necessarily help the atmosphere at Anfield."

Tags:

football news

Share this article

Related Posts

World Cup 2026: Ivory Coast 1-0 Ecuador - Amad Diallo nets 90th-minute winner to end Ecuador's 19-game unbeaten streak

World Cup 2026: Ivory Coast 1-0 Ecuador - Amad Diallo nets 90th-minute winner to end Ecuador's 19-game unbeaten streak

Manchester United winger Amad Diallo came off the bench to net a 90th-minute goal to get Ivory Coast's World Cup off to the perfect start with a 1-0 w...

World Cup 2026: USA's Folarin Balogun stars against Paraguay after rise at Arsenal and switch away from England

World Cup 2026: USA's Folarin Balogun stars against Paraguay after rise at Arsenal and switch away from England

Born in the USA and born for the big stage.Folarin Balogun was America's star on the opening night of their home World Cup, scoring twice in their thr...

Rangers to hold talks with Hearts boss Derek McInnes over replacing Danny Röhl, who is on verge of joining RB Salzburg

Rangers to hold talks with Hearts boss Derek McInnes over replacing Danny Röhl, who is on verge of joining RB Salzburg

Rangers will hold talks with Derek McInnes about replacing Danny Röhl.Gers have made a formal approach to Hearts to speak to their head coach with cur...

Manchester United transfers: Michael Carrick open to allowing Marcus Rashford to return to Old Trafford ahead of next season- Paper Talk

Manchester United transfers: Michael Carrick open to allowing Marcus Rashford to return to Old Trafford ahead of next season- Paper Talk

The top stories and transfer rumours from Sunday's newspapers...Michael Carrick has left the door ajar for Marcus Rashford to resume his Manchester Un...

Haiti 0-1 Scotland: Steve Clarke reflects on 'must-win' World Cup Group C opener as Andy Robertson says players 'achieved their dreams'

Haiti 0-1 Scotland: Steve Clarke reflects on 'must-win' World Cup Group C opener as Andy Robertson says players 'achieved their dreams'

Steve Clarke believes the pressure has eased on Scotland after earning their first World Cup victory in 36 years with a 1-0 win over Haiti in their Gr...

World Cup: England's five-star Kansas City hotel and training facilities explained

World Cup: England's five-star Kansas City hotel and training facilities explained

England's team base in Kansas City is nothing like any we have seen before.The FA has always been the envy of every other nation at major tournaments,...