Andoni Iraola: “I want that if my players make mistakes that it is not because they are afraid”

It was the Duke of Rutland who in 1795 attested to the status of that corner of the English coast.

“In this abandoned and sterile bush there is not a single human being to guide us,” he protested.

Two hundred years later, the area is home to the city of Bournemouth and, more importantly, AFC Bournemouth, a football club founded in 1899 and since last summer directed by Andoni Iraola (Usurbil, Gipuzcoa, 1982) which has become the most amazing adventure of this Premier, because between October and December there was no other team that added more points.

It is the most profitable streak in the history of the

Cherries

and its creator appeared at the Vitality Stadium last Wednesday, in the midst of preparations for the visit of Liverpool, who this Sunday showed that they remain unstoppable in their quest to establish themselves in the leadership : 0-4.

Ask.

How do you plan a match against Liverpool?

Answer.

It's complicated because we want to do something not so different, but you are aware that if you play their game, they usually come out winners.

It happened every time we played against them: in many moments it seemed that we could hurt them, but the reality is that we ended up losing because when they arrived they were more accurate.

Their players know each other perfectly and that gives them a great advantage.

With the signing of Endo, Szoboszlai and Gravenberch gained a little muscle, the ability to cover a lot of ground and do damage with those second-line unchecking that always characterized them.

Q.

What did you discover playing against Klopp and Guardiola?

R.

Absolute elite with different styles.

Pep wants to have the game always more controlled while Klopp is willing to accept a certain exchange of blows.

Pep, even if there are fewer blows, wants them to be only to one side.

Klopp knows that in that exchange his blows are going to be more accurate and he is willing to give you some control of the match.

Pep no.

Pep wants to have everything very, very controlled so as not to give the opponent the slightest option.

In the Premier, even for the referees, the number one priority is that the show is good.

Let the ratings go up.

From there they think about the rules

Q.

In the Premier, is the spectacle valued more than the results?

A.

I realized it in the meetings we had at the beginning of the season with the referees.

For them, the number one priority was that the show was good.

That the audience ratings were growing.

From there they thought about the rules and decided whether to call fewer fouls or stop the game less so that the number of goals increased, so that the effective time was greater.

They are understanding the business.

Q.

The American owners of your club signed you to implement the attacking football of their Rayo.

The Premier clubs follow a line by signing coaches like Postecoglou, De Zerbi, Pochettino, Ten Hag, Emery, Arteta or you, so that they play attractive and dynamic football.

Why is there less and less commitment to self-proclaimed pragmatic technicians, those who were previously called

results-oriented

?

A.

We have to thank the coaches who have come before.

They showed that by trusting in a way of doing things, in an idea, you can obtain results, perhaps in a longer term.

In my case, with the difficult start we had, I have to be grateful because preparing a team to try to be dominant with the ball in the opposite field always takes time.

Q.

Until the tenth matchday, Bournemouth was penultimate and did not win a single game.

Is it easier to start a team to close behind and give up the initiative?

A.

What we don't allow ourselves is to doubt too much, because the reason they brought me is because they liked what we did at Rayo, trying to be protagonists with a tighter budget.

Only details had to be changed.

Training has never been my passion.

I feel like a footballer.

I wasn't sure that this was my future and I put myself to the test.

That took the pressure off me.

I wasn't afraid to think that I probably wasn't good for this.

Q.

How do you surprise your rivals when it turns out that here almost everyone plays the same game, with that advanced pressure, those constant transitions, those duels...?

A.

The level of coaches in the Premier is very high.

All the rivals are very hardworking.

You realize directly that there are things that you did to surprise that they have already been caught.

And we say it on the bench: “Record this play for me and show it to me later because we have to go one step further because here we are already behind!”

In the League we had a more differentiated style.

Here you see the number of goals scored, the comebacks, the verticality that the fans demand, when they ask you to go for the game... We don't stray too far from our model, but we have made adjustments.

We moved some players a few meters, we were braver with the defensive line, we were more willing to leave the zone.

Q.

They say that the difference between coaches who go for it and those who don't is the use of the defensive pivot as a watchdog.

The brave ones, when they apply pressure, send the guard dog to harass a rival midfielder, while the prudent ones leave the pivot behind to help their center backs cover the forwards with one more.

You always send your midfielders, Christie and Cook, to put pressure on the opposing midfielders.

Because?

A.

There is no other option.

If you want to be aggressive, in the end that extra player that we coaches keep, there comes a time when you can't allow him not to jump.

If you want to have what they call here the

plus one

, that extra man in defense, you have to give up initiative to the opponent and in most cases it does not compensate us.

We are more efficient often assuming man-to-man without coverage, or with coverage with a man who also has his own, than by being more prudent and zonal.

Our change has been to be a little more aggressive in that.

In the traditional forward pressing model, all your players press the man except one who stays between two rivals.

You trust that this man who stays in an intermediate zone will make the best decision and know when to be more aggressive and go up to pressure the furthest rival, or when to be more cautious.

But in the end there comes a time when it is convenient to be clearer in the message, even if you take more risks, and say: 'If you have to make a mistake, let it be because you went to the furthest pressure, even if you lose the duel.'

If you are not clear, the players tend to protect themselves and say: 'I hope he catches me behind the ball and in my zone.'

I want that if my players make mistakes, it is not because they were afraid.

I believe in always attacking because it brings me closer to the result.

If someone convinces me that by defending low, everyone compact, we will not concede goals and we will be accurate on the counterattack, I would be happy to try it.

Q.

You reflect a lot on what it means to give a message to the footballer.

And he gives the City game as an example.

A.

Yes. On City's day I was clearly wrong.

Because we went to match that line of five with which they attack and I put five defenders at the start, something we had never done before.

It was the worst message I could send to the players.

We should have done the same but simply delaying a midfielder a little, without conveying that message that we have to protect ourselves more.

Because I didn't like our first part at all.

They didn't score a goal until after half an hour but we weren't the team we want to be.

We retreated a lot, we didn't push forward... It was a clear mistake, one of those that you see in the first minutes, but you can't correct until half-time.

Q.

You have experienced it as a player.

What to do when your coach gives you the chance to hide?

A.

You take it!

That's why great coaches are those who expose you a lot.

The ones that undress you.

'Hey, you have to take on this grief;

If you lose it, you lose it.

But let's see if you are capable of competing against this or that.'

Because if you enter the field with many players who are going to hide, the team cannot transmit joy.

Q.

What message is used to generate that collective enthusiasm that makes a small team like Bournemouth or Rayo all look for verticality, constantly asking for the ball or defending one-on-one?

A.

From a message of confidence in them: 'If we are going to play like this it is because we believe in you.'

If we thought that they could not endure a duel against Salah or Darwin Núñez it would be unthinkable.

But we have the resources.

When the player emerges victorious from those situations, he provides feedback.

That's why it has cost us.

We didn't have those winning references.

We were selling something that they saw was not working, until we beat Newcastle and played with Liverpool in the Cup, despite losing, because they saw that they could compete.

Q.

Did it help you to consider your coaching career as an experiment, to see what would happen, and not as an existential challenge?

A.

Training has never been my passion.

I feel like a footballer.

This is a secondary way of experiencing similar emotions, never the same ones that you experience within a field.

I wasn't sure that this was my future and I put myself to the test.

Now I am delighted.

But yeah, that took the pressure off me.

I wasn't afraid to think that I probably wasn't good for this.

This can make you accept things that if you are afraid of failure you may not accept, like going to a club in Cyprus...

Q.

Or release the watchdog.

A.

Or release the watchdog.

Q.

Many coaches are afraid of doing things that will end up costing them their position and they say that they want to attack but that it is also good to manage several records, and to avoid risks from time to time they put the team behind.

For you, there is no more record than the attack?

A.

I believe in this way of playing because it brings me closer to the result.

If someone convinced me that by defending low, all compact, we will not concede goals and we will be accurate on the counterattack, then I would be happy to prove it.

I don't have enough pride to say: 'I don't want to win like that.'

No!

I would be delighted to win like that too!

The thing is that I think it would give me a lower winning percentage.

It is complex because there are things that you are going to have to do whether you like it or not.

Regardless of the idea of ​​the game you have, you are going to have to defend lower because the opponent is superior to you and forces you.

But that can never be our idea before starting the game.

Only if we are not successful will we try to defend to play that game that we don't like, but we also have to win.

Q.

Another sign of risk aversion among coaches are those teams that channel the attack from the outside to avoid sensitive losses and counterattacks.

Bournemouth is the other way around: between forwards, wingers and midfielders, they bring together up to five attackers where there are only three lanes.

How do you make that agglomeration flow?

A.

We need a lot of mobility from the players to give options to those who have the ball.

For this we must give value to those who move and do not receive.

You have to attack the spaces and not do what is comfortable, which is to ask for it from the inside.

There is a trend: all the wings play with a changed leg to score their goal at the long post, because it is more uncomfortable to always ask for it from space, or to measure themselves against the full-back in long runs, or to look for one-on-one from the outside, or to look for unmarking behind the opponent's back.

If you make the effort once you receive the ball, you begin to limit yourself and others.

That's why I like wingers, like Tavernier, Álvaro García or Isi, to be unpredictable and not limited to facing the outside or getting into the playmaker's lane.

Today, if the full-backs know your move, they won't let you pass.

Pep wants to have the game always more controlled while Klopp is willing to accept the exchange of blows

Q.

Is all this achieved with field work?

A.

Field work should help the players get to know each other and for me to get to know them.

You know your players by trial and error.

As coaches we almost always make mistakes during games.

The next day you analyze it and I rarely think I made the changes when I had to make them.

The important thing is to learn.

It has taken me quite a few games to recognize that Ryan Christie, the

number ten

, could play much more at the base because he helps us more if he is not as fixed in finishing zones as we required of him at the beginning.

Christie was a great find.

I realized late that he was a great player, and I didn't see it because I judged him by his physical appearance and I thought that in the middle he couldn't win so many duels.

Then you see that this is not really the case because he has intuition, he has good reading, his relationship with the ball is very good and although it may seem like he does risky things, for him they are not risky because his percentage of solutions in those tangles is quite high.

Sometimes what the rule advises is not applicable to some players who make technical gestures, turns, or make decisions, which give them confidence and allow them to clarify the situation.

Q.

Being a good coach means identifying individual qualities that contradict the coaching school manual?

A.

There is an example in basketball.

Stephen Curry shoots three-pointers from nine meters.

Obviously it is not a good decision.

But if you're Stephen Curry it probably is because that allows you to shoot unopposed with a high percentage of success.

Q.

You are reckless in the opponent's area and cautious in your own.

Why do they come out so many times with long passes?

A.

We give ourselves less and less space, we press higher, and the players most under pressure are often the defensive midfielders, or even the goalkeepers!

There are not many players who can remain calm near their goal with many rivals very close.

That is why players like Rodri are so valued.

It is invaluable for a team to have the possibility of playing with the midfielder under pressure knowing that he will be able to turn and look forward.

That is very difficult.

You have to turn your head five times a second to control not only what is coming at you, but also where you are going to pass the ball to make the next movements.

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