Andoni Iraola did not want to become a burden.
At the end of April 2015, 12 seasons after making his debut for Athletic Club, where he made 510 appearances, he announced he would be leaving the Bilbao side when his contract expired a few weeks later.
The then 32-year-old was looking for a new club for the first time. He would join Major League Soccer (MLS) side New York City FC that summer, midway through their inaugural season.
Sixteen months later, Iraola announced his retirement as a player — but it proved to be an important spell for what has followed.
On Wednesday (early Thursday UK time), he returns to the Big Apple and iconic Yankee Stadium, where his former club still play home matches, as Liverpool’s new head coach. The Premier League club take on Wrexham of the Championship in the second of a three-match pre-season tour of the United States.
Were it not for that spell in MLS, the 44-year-old may never have been in a position to become Arne Slot’s successor this summer.
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Iraola was unsure where his post-football career would take him when he headed across the Atlantic Ocean back then.
MLS has grown considerably in the past decade, and when Iraola arrived there was a perception that the North American league was a place for top European players to go to bank some extra money before they retire.
New York City, as part of the broader City Football Group stable of clubs spearheaded by Manchester City, had recruited a handful of global stars to kickstart their debut year. Striker David Villa, Iraola’s international team-mate with Spain, was already there; big-name midfielders Frank Lampard, formerly of Chelsea and England, and Italy great Andrea Pirlo arrived in the mid-season transfer window with Iraola.
“There are usually two versions of international players who come to MLS, especially when we’re talking 10 years ago,” their former NYCFC colleague Jason Hernandez, who is now general manager at the league’s Toronto FC, tells The Athletic.
“You can get a player who isn’t as motivated, because they have achieved so much and the gap in level is big, but then you had players like Andoni who came in with a competitive edge, an intent to achieve something special and he had a massive, positive influence.”
Jason Hernandez was a team-mate of Iraola’s at New York City (Michael Stewart/Getty Images)
Iraola spoke good English, and while there was an initial adaptation period as he got used to team-mates, league and country, his influence grew quickly.
He went straight into the team at right-back, joining a back line that included Hernandez in central defence. His debut was a 4-4 draw with Toronto and his first win came in his third game, a 5-3 defeat of Orlando City.
Under head coach Jason Kreis, it was a difficult first season as New York City finished eighth in the 10-team Eastern Conference, missing out on the MLS Cup playoffs which decide the champions. Iraola made nine appearances, eight of them starts, before his campaign was ended by injury.
“It was like having a coach on the field,” says Hernandez. “He was able to read the game and communicate with teammates, which helped elevate those around him. He was able to relay messages from the coaching staff, and he understood what the game needed at different moments.
“Expansion teams in MLS can be tricky, especially in those early stages, and it comes with a lot of challenges. It would have been easy for him to get frustrated, and even if he was, he never showed it. He was a humble team-player who helped stabilise us.”
Away from the pitch, Iraola lived in the heart of Manhattan with his family.
Playing in Bilbao had brought pressures because of Athletic Club’s rule to only field players born or trained in the Basque Country region that city is part of. Success or failure carried huge weight for players, staff and supporters. In New York, he was unrecognised, and took the opportunity to explore neighbourhoods around him and wider America from coast to coast.
He spent time with countryman Villa away from the training ground and team meals were frequently organised by the Spanish duo, Lampard and Pirlo to try to knit together a newly-formed squad. Iraola immersed himself in American football, which he had followed since he was a teenager, and basketball.
He followed the NFL’s New York Giants, but ventured further afield in choosing his NBA team, the Minnesota Timberwolves, due to his affection for their power-forward Kevin Garnett — the league’s Most Valuable Player in 2004 who would become an NBA champion with the Boston Celtics four years later. He took inspiration from the methodology and game-planning of those sports, and has applied it to his football coaching.
Andoni Iraola on one of his first appearances for New York City in 2015 (Fred Kfoury III/Icon Sportswire/Corbis/Getty Images)
Clear and concise messaging, which helped steer Rayo Vallecano to La Liga promotion in 2021 and Bournemouth to sixth position last season, their best-ever Premier League finish, is how he gets information across to players as a coach.
That delivery was already present when he was speaking to his peers in New York. RJ Allen, who had arrived at the club shortly before Iraola joined, was also a right-back. He was not afraid to pick the brains of his new team-mate.
Allen, who now works in the business world, would pull him to one side after training to ask him specifics about their position. Iraola would offer his input when it was asked for during meetings involving the defensive players as tactics were laid out.
“You could see he loved the game and his tactical knowledge was so deep,” says Allen. “He was a leader, his attention to detail and professionalism stood out; we all wanted to ask him questions and he would engage and share his thoughts. I learnt a lot.
“During meetings, he would be showing and teaching us things, and you could bounce ideas off of him. He was always open to conversations and took players, especially the youngsters, under his wing. He was a good speaker and always clear with his advice and instructions.”
RJ Allen remembers Andoni Iraola the team-mate fondly (Tim Clayton/Corbis via Getty Images)
When Iraola spoke, everybody listened. But there was a less serious side to his personality, too.
“He always gave valuable feedback when we were talking about our principles and problem-solving,” says Hernandez. “From a personal side, him and Pirlo, they weren’t the ones telling jokes every minute, but when they decided to speak up, they would have a real laugh, because they’re smart guys.”
Allen and Hernandez offer contrasting views on whether they felt back then that Iraola was destined for coaching success.
Allen refers to him as a “a football guru” with “an unbelievable football IQ”, while Hernandez did not have him down as a coach-to-be, although on reflection over a decade later he admits “the way he operated on the pitch and with team-mates” pointed towards that path.
The arrival of former France and Arsenal midfielder Patrick Vieira, who replaced Kreis as head coach for the 2016 MLS season, was key to Iraola’s pursuit of coaching.
“Patrick gave me a new perspective on the game, because he came from the Manchester City school, where he had trained as a coach,” Iraola wrote in a piece for The Coaches’ Voice in 2022. “A positional game, in a 4-3-3, with the intention of looking for the free man and keeping everyone in their position.”
Hernandez describes Vieira as a coach who had a “high demand” for professionalism, standards in training, commitment and accountability. From that foundation, he implemented his tactics, and they had a positive impact on results and performances.
Iraola began the season being used at both centre-back and right-back before dropping to the bench. Then an injury to Federico Bravo saw Vieira move him to the No 6 role, in a midfield with fellow 30-somethings Lampard and Pirlo. “They used to call me, Frank and Andrea, the midfield of 100 years,” he told Bournemouth’s official website this year.
Vieira, having been one of the game’s most dominant central midfielders of the past 30 years, offered advice to Iraola on his new position, and the pair spoke frequently. To his team-mates, the transition appeared seamless.
“I remember the first time he played as the No 6,” Hernandez says. “Yankee Stadium is a tight pitch, so spaces are tight and players are coming at you fast. His composure and calmness in an unfamiliar position were so impressive.
“The MLS is a demanding league from a physical perspective, so in midfield there can be a lot of ground to cover, so you have to be smart, anticipate things, and communicate well. He never looked rushed.”
Andoni Iraola (centre of back row) played alongside Andrea Pirlo (centre, front row) and David Villa (bottom right) at New York City (Tim Clayton/Corbis via Getty Images)
New York City finished second in the conference to qualify for the playoffs — a significant step forward for a team in their infancy — but were knocked out at the first hurdle by Toronto, 7-0 on aggregate. Five days after the second leg, a dismal 5-0 home defeat, Iraola’s contribution to the club’s season was recognised with the Unsung Hero award from supporters’ group Third Rail.
“There are players who work really hard for the team but never get mentioned, and those kind of guys are really quite special because they sacrifice themselves for the team,” Vieira told those in attendance at the Playwright Pub, near the Empire State Building, at the supporters club’s end-of-season party. “Andoni is the perfect image of a team player.”
The following week, Iraola announced his retirement as a player. By then, he had a plan — one that has paid off handsomely.
He returned to the club where he began as a youngster, Antiguoko, and launched a coaching career.
With the Wrexham game at Yankee Stadium tonight, that career has now led him back to the place where his ambition first formed — via a first crack at management with AEK Larnaca in Cyprus, the top two tiers of the Spanish game with Mirandes and Vallecano and the south coast of England at Bournemouth — to one of the biggest jobs in world football.
