Andoni Iraola: ‘When 10 players are behind the ball, I don’t feel very comfortable’

After an unforgiving start, Andoni Iraola has enjoyed an eye-catching first season in the Premier League, leading Bournemouth to their best points tally in the division, with a top‑half finish a distinct possibility heading into the final day. His work, imposing a breathless, aggressive style on a dynamic team, has earned him a nomination for the manager of the season award, as well as a new contract. As he approaches his first anniversary in charge next month, the closest thing to a grumble – as an avid cyclist – is the dearth of hilly terrain in Dorset. “The longest one is 200m,” he says with a smile, raising and then drooping his right hand. “It stops just as you are getting started.”

Raised in the Basque Country, the cycling heartland of Spain, Iraola has long been fascinated by the endurance and precision at the crux of competing on two wheels. During pre-season in Marbella last summer he was glued to the Tour de France over dinner and it was similar in his playing days, the majority spent at his boyhood club Athletic Bilbao, whom he captained to the Europa League final under Marcelo Bielsa in 2011-12. The pressures have changed since then.

“I’m enjoying it a little bit more as a coach than I was as a player,” he says. “I played [almost] all of my career for Athletic – it was my club – and I probably gave too much importance to everything, to every detail, every performance; I felt a lot of responsibility. Now I understand it better – we are not so important – and I think I suffer a little bit less.”

This week, at the end of days spent preparing to play at Chelsea on Sunday, he has tried to catch up on the Giro d’Italia. “[Tadej] Pogacar is destroying everyone, as expected,” he says. “I love the sport and it is a tradition in the Basque Country. Everyone travels to watch the different stages of the Tour, the Vuelta [a España]; the Itzulia we have at home and I try to follow it.”

For Iraola, 41, cycling is also a rich source of intrigue in terms of cross-pollination. “I think there are a lot of sports where they are ahead of us in certain areas and where we can take things,” he says, also citing basketball and NFL. He knew some of the staff at Euskaltel-Euskadi, the Basque cycling team famed for their orange tops, and got to know Mauro Gianetti after declaring the UAE Team Emirates team principal and CEO his favourite cyclist in an interview while a player in Bilbao. Gianetti subsequently reached out and gave Iraola a shirt of the team he managed at the time, Saunier Duval-Prodir, and introduced him to Matxin Joxean Fernández, the team manager of UAE, for whom Pogacar rides.

Connections with those at the forefront of elite sport have led to interesting conversations. “We like to share things, share the methodology they use, the process they use, to show the players,” Iraola says. “For example, the discipline in cycling is so important … their body fats, their training, kilometres [ridden], everything is very measured to try to find the peak of their form in the season. It is very interesting, especially the sports science of it. As footballers, and if I consider myself when I was a player, we are not into so much detail: [looking] into everything you eat, how many hours you sleep. I like this process.”

Bournemouth monitor body fats, like many clubs, with small fines if players are overweight. They also place emphasis on repeating high-intensity efforts and the speed at which players react. No wonder, then, that only Liverpool have recovered more loose balls in the league this season. These could be details straight out of the Bielsa playbook.

“If you want to attack the spaces, be aggressive on the press – you’re not giving a lot of time to the players to rest and with Marcelo it was the same,” Iraola says. “I used to play with him for two seasons and he was very demanding. You only get there if you train the same way and everyone is really committed to it. You need players that buy into the idea and I feel like we have this.”

The only staff member to follow Iraola to Bournemouth was Pablo de la Torre, the fitness coach who worked with him in his first managerial post at AEK Larnaca and at Rayo Vallecano, whom Iraola left for England. How important is athleticism to implementing his style? “It is key because we try to play with a fast rhythm. We don’t want the games to stop and you don’t have time to recover. I always say: ‘You have to ask for the ball when you’re tired.’ If you are waiting to rest before asking again for the ball or making the run into space, everyone can do this. But you are a Premier League player and if you are tired, this is the moment you have to push the opposition, when they are also tired, and try to break them. To do that you have to be at your best physically.”

When Iraola was informed of his manager-of-the-season nomination, he reacted in his office by pressing Unai Emery’s case, and he does likewise here. “I’m very proud to be in the same place with Mikel [Arteta], Unai, Pep [Guardiola], Jürgen Klopp … some managers that are clearly above me, and I think it is good that other clubs apart from the top four get this kind of recognition,” he says. “Sean Dyche and Gary O’Neil, who are not fighting for European places, have had good seasons and I think that it is good the league recognises other clubs. But for me Unai should win it. He has been really amazing since he came to Aston Villa. He has been improving the team, they have been very close to a European final and to get into the Champions League is a big, big achievement for Villa.”

Iraola, who gave up a law degree to become a professional footballer and has read all of Haruki Murakami’s works, is warm, engaging and modest. On a few occasions he pooh-poohs the merits of his playing career, which began playing on La Concha beach in San Sebastián with Arteta and Xabi Alonso, then together for their local youth side, Antiguoko. He ended it living in Manhattan, playing for New York City, at the base of midfield under Patrick Vieira, who got Iraola thinking about management. “Playing in a midfield three, behind [Andrea] Pirlo and [Frank] Lampard … we suffered when we didn’t have the ball because we didn’t have the legs but tactically and with the ball we could do a lot of things in the MLS.”

He chuckles. Even at the end of a gruelling season, it is clear Iraola is enjoying life in the dugout, settled on the south coast. He has explored the scenery on his doorstep with his wife, nine-year-old daughter and four-year-old son, visiting the New Forest and getting the Sandbanks ferry to Swanage. As for that contract extension until 2026, after the billionaire owner, Bill Foley, initiated talks a fortnight ago, it speaks to the lesser-spotted value of faith in the formula. Bournemouth’s outgoing technical director, Richard Hughes, who joins Liverpool next month, did his homework on how Iraola’s sides historically played and his front‑foot philosophy.

Related: Andoni Iraola: master of organised chaos offers Bournemouth new identity

Bournemouth did not win a league game until last October but their slow start prompted Iraola to exaggerate his methods. “In Spain we were a very, very aggressive team, a very high press, but we had to be even more aggressive because the standards here are really high. Every team is really pushing to recover the ball as high as they can. We had to reinforce our message, take even more risks, play with an even higher line because otherwise we couldn’t really make a difference. When I’m on the bench and everyone is in a low block, really compact, 10 players behind the ball, I don’t feel very comfortable.”

Despite starting the league season with a nine-match winless streak, nobody panicked, least of all Iraola. Staff talk of a character with unwavering belief in his formula. “I am used to renewing at the end of every year: ‘You are happy, I’m happy, OK, let’s continue like this,’” he says. “I don’t want any sides to take a decision to continue just because I have a contract. No, it’s because we really believe it is the best thing from both sides. I have to be thankful to the players because they continued trusting in what we were doing. I’ve never felt like they wanted to play in a different way.”