Thursday afternoon at the aptly-named Vitality stadium and Andoni Iraola is smiling, laughing and talking about the importance of creativity and animation, chemistry and happiness, in football and beyond.
“I don’t have complaints,” he says. “I think we have a very good changing room, a healthy one. It’s something that will give you a lot of points at the end of the season. When problems come, you know the people you want next to you. I’ve no complaints. Happiness brings points.”
It is an unexpected twist in the conversation, because Iraola then nods to the book on the desk in front of him and says: “This is very unhappy — a dangerous route.
“But I liked the book.”
The book in question is Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. The reason it is here is because Iraola mentioned it recently to TNT Sports’ deaf language programme Sign Up. Not only has Iraola read the novel — a long time ago, he says — but, since he became manager of Bournemouth, he has visited Shelley’s grave.
Something known locally, if not so much nationally, is that Shelley is buried in the middle of Bournemouth.
“I read it when I was, like, 19, 20 years old,” Iraola says. “I remember the process, because I started by reading Dracula by Bram Stoker and I really enjoyed that one. It was a different book, written differently — in (the form of) letters — one envelope, then another. I really enjoyed it and from there I thought: ‘OK, now I go to Frankenstein, it could be something similar.’
“But now, when I remember, Frankenstein by Mary Shelley is completely different. It’s nothing to do with Dracula. But I also enjoyed it.
“The connection with Bournemouth, I didn’t know until I came here. One day, just out walking with my wife, I think she told me: ‘I’ve read Mary Shelley’s grave is around here’. And it is in the middle of town. You can go there and see it. It’s nice to see, it doesn’t look like something special, but I think it is part of the history here. I liked the experience.”
Mary Shelley’s grave at St Peter’s church in Bournemouth (Michael Walker/The Athletic)
And we’re off, Iraola confirming the outside impression of an uncommonly cerebral football man with a hinterland. He is 42 and was studying Law when moving into the professional game as an Athletic Club player over two decades ago. He says reading has always been part of his life, including his football career.
“I started reading quite early and I remember all my football life — I was a professional from 20 — I used my travels by bus, plane, always with a book,” Iraola says. “It was not part of my preparation, but it helped me forget what was happening around me for one hour, two hours.
“What I get (from literature) is some distraction from football. When you start reading a book you are thinking about other things, you don’t think of football. It’s like going for a walk or riding a bike.
“Normally when I read, I read one book that is about detectives, quite easy, noir; and then I try to read one book that is more difficult intellectually, that requires more attention from yourself. It’s the way I’ve done it.”
Shelley was 20 when writing Frankenstein in the early 19th century, which Iraola agrees is mind-blowing when one considers the anguished and futuristic subject matter. It was published in 1818 and has never been out of print. She is buried in Bournemouth due to her son Percy — who lived in nearby Boscombe — moving her remains, and those of her distinguished parents Mary Wollstonecraft and William Godwin, from London. This paragraph hardly does her extraordinary life justice.
“The generations before ours, I think they were much more mature at the same age,” Iraola says. “We sometimes want to be eternal kids, continuing our studies until we are almost 30. Life was different when she lived. You had to wake up earlier. I think it’s amazing she can write this book at 20.”
Iraola is not painting himself as football’s intellectual — he is responding to questions — and is quick to get back to football. But occasionally he returns to the novel in front of him and says he still sees “two, three players with books” on Bournemouth away trips, even though “nowadays we’re all on the phone, still reading but in a different way”.
Iraola putting his Bournemouth players through their paces (Robin Jones – AFC Bournemouth/AFC Bournemouth via Getty Images)
He sits with the initials ‘AI’ on his tracksuit top and if ever there was an early entry into the world of artificial intelligence it is the unnamed ‘monster’ summoned by Shelley’s Victor Frankenstein. “In a fit of enthusiastic madness I created a rational creature,” Frankenstein declares at one point.
Iraola smiles again — he will come back to pithy two-word phrases such as “enthusiastic madness” — and talks about the creative process in the novel, and in football coaching. “There can be a similarity here,” he says.
“They create something in the book and they don’t know the repercussions, the consequences of what you are creating. Sometimes you will make mistakes creating. In this process you learn from mistakes and become better. I probably haven’t thought about it like this (gestures towards book), but it’s true that when you give some freedom, go to places that are new, you don’t know the end product.
“But sometimes you have to risk. Luckily for me — and not for the book — we are talking about football. The consequences are not as bad as what happens in the book. You can lose games, in the worst case (scenario) you can be sacked. But even if the worst happens, it’s only a game.”
He pauses, then adds: “But if you fail, I always say, you have to fail with your ideas.”
Iraola says his coaching ideas are not much changed from his first days as a manager at AEK Larnaca in Cyprus, which was not even seven years ago. He moved from there to Mirandes in La Liga’s Segunda Division, then to Rayo Vallecano and, in June 2023, to Bournemouth. Today his lateral thinking and vertical play has Bournemouth — amid an injury crisis — starting to ponder Champions League football next season.
“The things that have given me the chance to be here, to coach in the Premier League, are ideas I trust in from the start,” he says. “You have to adapt, but if you saw the first games I coached in Cyprus, what the team was trying to do is very similar to what we are trying to do here. You learn in the process, but the main idea doesn’t change a lot.
“I was clear in what I wanted to do. I had to learn a lot of small things — some not so small, influential — but the main approach I haven’t changed because it’s the way I love football to be played and it’s the way I feel comfortable coaching. I could play a different way, and I have the tools to do it, but I think I would be a worse coach practising a way of playing I don’t feel inside.”
Iraola, playing for Athletic Club, challenges Villarreal’s Robert Pires during his playing days (Jose Jordan/AFP via Getty Images)
Iraola’s style could be described as collective structure combined with dynamic individualism. After Bournemouth’s 4-1 dismantling of Newcastle at St James’ Park last month, midfielder Tyler Adams encapsulated the approach as “controlled chaos”.
It was a two-word compliment, but it is terminology Iraola does not want to encourage. Organised spontaneity might be more appropriate. Nor is he eager to punt any Marcelo Bielsa comparison — Iraola was coached by Bielsa in Bilbao. “Marcelo is… you learn a lot from him. I’m quite conventional,” Iraola says.
“I’m not sure if I like, when they talk about my teams, the use of this word (chaos),” he says. “People have used this term, especially here in England, and I understand what they mean, but I think there’s much more organisation behind it than it looks.
“There has to be good organisation and from that good organisation there can appear very good ideas — what the players do when they are on the ball — but you have to put in starting points. It’s dangerous to associate creativity with everything being a mess. You have to put in the structure and get in a position from where players have to make their own decisions.
“The game is for the players. Coaches are just the assistants. Coaches cannot pretend to control the game — luckily for the game. But I try to encourage this creativity, try not to limit touches in training for example, try to encourage them to carry the ball, go one against one, take risks. Because I think it’s the easiest way to make a difference.
“You can organise patterns but, collectively, a lot of things have to go in synchronicity; players going by their own can make a difference.”
Iraola is not chastising Adams. He is clarifying a coaching attitude.
It is honed on the two pitches adjacent to the stadium — a humble contrast to Bournemouth’s new £40million ($50.5m) training ground at Canford Magna nine miles away, which opens next month.
“It’s something that you have to develop in training every day,” Iraola says. “Sometimes I love drills in training where players have to make a lot of decisions. It’s not just a closed exercise where you tell them to pass from there to there. Normally we try to train with opposed drills, otherwise I see it as a little bit artificial — unopposed training. If you have someone challenging, it becomes something completely different.
“In these drills sometimes they even have to cheat, or find ways to win the exercise. I think they are good for developing collectively and individually. From academy level, it’s something I encourage in the coaches, to find exercises that are demanding mentally for the player.”
Iraola oversees training (Robin Jones – AFC Bournemouth/AFC Bournemouth via Getty Images)
Bournemouth’s players are thriving under this thoughtful stewardship. Iraola’s warmth is hard to miss and players are clearly responding to the club’s environment, although he says managerial distance is a quality he has had to acquire since his Larnaca days.
From this, however, flows his vital human ingredient, chemistry, and that leads to all-important workplace happiness.
“When I have to make decisions, I have to be very cold,” he says. “Sometimes you want a player you really like personally to do well, but if he’s going to be worse than another player you don’t like so much you have to think of the group. That’s hard.
“You have to think of the kind of people you want around your club and who will make the group of players and the atmosphere around the club better. Sometimes there are players you don’t think deserve to play but you know will give you more chance to win. You have to choose and you have to be honest.
“Chemistry is key. It is mandatory. I have not seen many teams get good results without chemistry, but it is something you have to build. You need good leaders to set a culture inside the club, clear values, because on the pitch, these values will appear.
“Happiness is very important. That’s the reason why managers value players who don’t play a lot but train very well. They are difficult to find and these are the players no manager wants to lose. For me these players are really valuable, even if the players don’t feel it the same way.
“This is one of the main parts of chemistry. If you’re playing, it’s very easy to be happy, but the ones who continue to push even when not playing keep the level high.”
Iraola is earnest, serious in this moment. In Frankenstein, Shelley wrote: “When falsehood can look so like the truth, who can assure themselves of certain happiness?”
But Iraola knows what he is creating at Bournemouth. It’s a big smile.
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Friday lunchtime in the media room at the stadium for the pre-match press conference for Saturday’s Premier League game against Wolves. Iraola takes the stage with that smile and retains it as the first question is delivered without delay.
“You’ve been linked with Real Madrid this week; when you saw that, what did you think?”
Iraola’s answer includes: “I don’t pay any attention to these things”; “We’re focused on the next game”; “I’ve been in this business a lot of years already… I know what has importance and what does not have importance.”
On it goes, Iraola being asked about his personal and family contentment on England’s south coast. Such speculation is an inevitable repercussion of what he is implementing at Bournemouth. He keeps deflecting big-picture questions back to Saturday’s game. When the possibility of the ‘Cherries’ being in the Champions League is raised, Iraola says: “We are on 43 points. We have a chance tomorrow to add one more point or three more points. That’s it.”
It is good-natured back-and-forth and in a room where there is a photograph of Harry Arter celebrating ‘League One Promotion 2012-13’, an indication of the novelty of Bournemouth’s current situation. Arter was playing third-tier football; season 2015-16 was the first time since 1923, when ‘Bournemouth’ was added to Boscombe FC, the club had been in England’s top division. No Bournemouth player has ever kicked a ball in European football.
Bournemouth’s players celebrate promotion from League One in April 2013 (Chris Brunskill/Getty Images)
The club’s first rise had a Russian businessman, Maxim Demin, in the background. Now Bournemouth are owned by U.S. billionaire Bill Foley. You do not need to be Shelley to know it’s no fairytale; hard cash is always part of success in professional football.
But as recently as March 2022, Bournemouth were losing at Preston and drawing at home to Peterborough in the Championship, so to go on their current run — one defeat in 13 Premier League games pre-Wolves — explains soaring external interest.
‘The Cherries’ conversation is changed. As the Bournemouth Echo, the local publication, notes on Friday, the team may not even need to finish fourth or higher to be in the Champions League as England’s UEFA co-efficient means fifth place may receive a place in the new 36-team format. There are other European places on offer from the Premier League, while the winners of the FA Cup go straight into the Europa League. Bournemouth are in the last 16 and host Wolves next Saturday.
Amid these questions are others on players making their way back from injury for selection and a couple on Wolves’ Matheus Cunha. Iraola says he faced him in Spain when Cunha played for Atletico Madrid. Iraola is full of praise. He is wary.
Iraola was wary of the threat posed by Wolves (Robin Jones – AFC Bournemouth/AFC Bournemouth via Getty Images)
Saturday lunchtime: across from St Peter’s church is a pub where fans of Bournemouth and Wolves are beginning to gather for pre-match pints. It is called the Mary Shelley. There is a Hammer Horror version of Frankenstein’s monster’s head on the sign.
Inside, Andrew and Brian, long-time Bournemouth supporters, are chatting. Andrew is beaming. He was at Anfield in August 2022 when Liverpool hammered Bournemouth 9-0, so he is relishing this season. “Eleven hours on a coach; now we’re beating Man City,” he says.
When he hears Iraola has been across the road to the churchyard to visit Shelley’s grave, he is impressed. But he was already.
“Eddie Howe should have a statue outside the ground and Iraola is absolutely incredible,” he says. “Iraola has developed these players, Justin Kluivert, Ryan Christie and a lot of the others. He’s lifted them up to such a high standard. And they give it their all, you see that. It makes you feel proud as a supporter.”
The Mary Shelley pub in Bournemouth (Michael Walker/The Athletic)
Two miles east, straight from kick off, Bournemouth’s energetic players demonstrate that judgment. They are bright and push for an early goal. Passes are not rolled; the ball is hit hard and fast. It’s full-throttle football.
But Wolves are strong, better than their position in the table suggests. The match is even. Then after half an hour Illia Zabarnyi challenges Rayan Ait-Nouri. The tackle looks clean from one angle, aggressive from another and reckless from a third. Referee Michael Salisbury shows a yellow card.
Then a 21st century ogre becomes involved — VAR.
Salisbury is instructed to go to the monitor. It is beside the Wolves fans, who know more than anyone about the inadequate application of this man-made invention. It seems Salisbury will raise yellow to red and he does. The game is changed by a challenge open to interpretation, Ait-Nouri is back skipping around immediately and, five minutes later, Cunha scores the only goal.
Cunha celebrates the only goal of the game (Jack Thomas – WWFC/Wolves via Getty Images)
Iraola, a man with “no complaints” now has some and afterwards he is back talking about “consequences — really big”.
But he also takes heart from the effort of his 10 men, who played with belief in a roused stadium for an hour. Iraola’s creation has soul and he claps constantly; when the final whistle blows he tosses a water bottle in the air. A lap of appreciation follows. Bournemouth fans applaud their players off.
Next is a trip to Brighton on Tuesday night. The top four may not have been reached this weekend, but this was no poor Bournemouth performance. There will be other chances.
Iraola can still smile, and he does.
(Photos: Getty Images; design: Eamonn Dalton)
