Who is Liverpool’s new Spanish head coach Andoni Iraola?

After the May 30 dismissal of head coach Arne Slot just a year after he helped the club win its 20th English league title, Liverpool Football Club have moved swiftly to secure his replacement before a summer that will be bookended by the FIFA World Cup.

Here’s a look at the Premier League team’s new coach Andoni Iraola, and his journey to the Anfield hotseat, after he was officially unveiled by the club on June 4:

Spanish coach with Basque origins, Bielsa tutelage

Iraola, 43, will be Liverpool’s second Spanish coach after Rafa Benitez, who won the Reds’ fifth European Cup after a 2005 final that has come to be known as the “Miracle of Istanbul” following an extraordinary comeback victory from three goals down.

At one point studying for a law degree in Spain, Iraola spent the majority of his playing career with Athletic Bilbao, a Spanish team famed for signing players only from the Basque Country – an area covering part of Spain and France.

A right fullback who was more passer than runner, Iraola captained Bilbao for four seasons, making 510 appearances before leaving for New York City FC in the US’ Major League Soccer for his playing swansong.

Playing in Spain’s La Liga, he also came up against future Liverpool playmaker Philippe Coutinho, the Brazilian notable for later becoming the Reds’ record transfer to Barcelona at £142 million (S$245 million), a sale that would fund some key purchases and precipitate a period of success.

Iraola shares his Basque heritage with incoming Chelsea manager Xabi Alonso, a former Liverpool midfielder once linked with the Anfield coaching job himself, and Arsenal’s Mikel Arteta – the trio were even teammates at amateur youth level in Spain.

Iraola captained Bilbao under eccentric Argentinian tactician Marcelo Bielsa, whose ‘controlled chaos’ philosophy has informed the Spaniard’s own tactical leanings.

Front-foot, high intensity, aggressive pressing in the final third are some words that have been used to describe Iraola’s brand of football, a style not completely foreign to a generation of Anfield match-goers weaned on the playing style of former manager Jurgen Klopp.

Popped Cherries

He joins Liverpool from Premier League side Bournemouth, guiding the team to a sixth-place finish in 2026 that earned European football – a first for the club on England’s south coast – while also recording the league’s longest unbeaten run last season, which stretched back to January. Iraola also achieved and bettered the club’s best Premier League points tally in each of his three seasons in charge.

Financially convenient for the Reds, no compensation was required to his former employers thanks to his contract with the Cherries expiring in 2026.

His feats with Bournemouth in the season just ended were even more remarkable given the departures of four of his five preferred starters in his backline from the previous season. The team also lost key forward Antoine Semenyo midway through the season for a club-record transfer to Manchester City.

Scrutiny is on the Spaniard to see if he can make the step up to a Liverpool side expected to challenge on four fronts, playing two matches a week.

Short contract ideals, family man

Iraola has signed a two-year contract with Liverpool, bucking a trend of coaches signing long-term deals that can stretch up to six years that may offer financial cushion of a large payout if the stint turns sour and leads to a sacking.

The Spaniard has said that monetary motivation is not his primary one, a thought process that reflects his short-term Anfield deal.

“To sign a contract just to have the assurance that if they sack you, you have the money no – I don’t feel pleased with this,” he told BBC Radio in 2025. “You have to earn the right every season.”

Iraola has also revealed the importance of his family, hinting that his managerial career may become secondary to the happiness of his wife and two children who joined him in England from Spain when he joined Bournemouth in 2023.

“They are sacrificing a lot. I am going from country to country to the best clubs I have the opportunity to go, and they have to come with me,” he told the BBC in September.

“I am very clear I couldn’t do this without them. If they tell me one day ‘I want to go back home’, I am leaving. We will go back home. I know there will be a moment in my career when I will have to not be the protagonist, when my kids are older and I won’t be the boss any more.

“I will be happy and we will go back home and I will be the supporting team behind.”

Iraola’s three-year stint with Bournemouth is his longest yet as a coach, with his initial two-year deal extended in 2025. How the Anfield faithful takes to the Spaniard, or turns against him as Slot discovered to his peril, may prove influential to the length of his stay on Merseyside.