We know one of the most popular young coaches in Europe.
What is the first thing that comes to your mind when you hear about Las Vegas? Casino? Money? Sand? A pile of sand? Sand as far as the eye can see? These things are certainly true and fully reflect the most famous city in Nevada but, for six years now, Las Vegas is also synonymous with ice. Despite being located in one of the hottest and driest states in the United States, the first professional sport to arrive in Vegas was ice hockey, thanks to a visionary and eccentric Texan entrepreneur.
We are in 2016 and the NHL decides to expand to colonize Nevada, still orphan of a professional team in the four major US sports leagues. To understand the mechanism behind this revolutionary move, it is necessary to specify how American sport works: basically, the president of the league, in agreement with all the owners of the other teams, grants a new spot to expand the league and, in doing so, increase the income. That’s exactly what happened in Vegas in June of 2016 when Roger Goodell, commissioner of the NHL, grants a team to Las Vegas for the modest sum of 500 million dollars, causing the astonishment of the entire US sports scene. Of all the imaginable sports, ice hockey seems the least suited to a reality and environment like that of Las Vegas.
Being a sport practiced by English, Irish but also Italian immigrants, hockey has always had a greater tradition on the east coast, in the mid-west and – of course – in Canada where it is a national sport. So, bringing a franchise into an environment so different from the one where hockey has sprouted and thrived seems like a feat only possible to a madman. The madman who decides to invest 500 million dollars is Bill Foleyentrepreneur based in Jacksonville, owner of a holding company with a net profit of 1,136,000,000 dollars in 2022. So for him paying the amount to grab the newborn franchise was little more than another investment but since the official immediately made things clear: “In three years I want to make the playoffs and in six I want to win the Stanley Cup (cup awarded to the winner of the NHL, ed)”. If the acquisition itself had already led Foley to be looked down upon by all insiders and enthusiasts, due to a bravado bordering on delusions of grandeur, the declaration on the Stanley Cup had cast a bad light on newborns Las Vegas Golden Knights.
But Foley had planned everything, investing in structures, staff and players who in his vision would have led him to his goal, carrying out constant growth: in the first season the Golden Knights went out in the first round of the playoffs, in the second they lost in the Conference finals, in the third they reach the Stanley Cup semifinals and – after an absence from the postseason last season – they fulfill Foley’s prophecy beating the Florida Panthers 4-1 to win the Stanley Cupexactly seven years after their birth.
However, Foley is still not satisfied with the impact he has had on sport and is already thinking about the next move, trying to land in the most prestigious football league in the world: the Premier League. Obviously, in this case he cannot buy a spot and create a franchise from scratch, but must “be content” with taking over an existing team to shape it according to his ambitions and desires. Foley’s timing is – yet again – perfect as he sets his sights on Bournemouth, which was put up for sale by Maxim Demin a few months ago. We are in December 2022 and the cherries change hands for just over 100 million pounds becoming the property of the Black Knight Football Club, a consortium of US entrepreneurs which also includes the actor Michael B. Jordan, which thus brings the number to eleven of US owners in the Premier League.
Bournemouth is a fairly anonymous team in the English football scene. Promoted to the Premier League for the first time in 2015, it has gone up and down with the Championship in recent seasons, returning to the top flight in 2022. When Foley takes over the team, he has in mind a revolution aimed at making Bournemouth make the leap in quality. following the Brighton and Bredford model and going to flesh out the – already numerous – middle class of the English championship. His idea is to expand the Vitality Stadium, invest in the sports center and attract increasingly prestigious players and coaches to southern England.
When Foley inherits the helm of cherries his ambitions collide with reality as he finds himself a mediocre team, with a low-level squad, which thanks to the fantastic work of Gary O’Neil manages to save himself four games early. Despite the great contribution given by the Bromley coach, Foley decides to carry out the first major revolution in his management. In a few hours the new president fires O’Neil and announces the signing for two seasons of Andoni Iraola, recently freed from Rayo Vallecano. At first glance this may seem like the classic move of the president who arrives and has to cut the cord with the old property but Foley motivates his choice in a communicated published on the team website. In these lines, the president says he is enthusiastic about Iraola’s style of play, his football ideas and what the Basque coach has achieved in the last three seasons with Rayo Vallecano, labeling Iraola as the designated coach to complete the objectives in the medium to long term.
A marriage (that seems) perfect
Foley – or whoever – was right when he described Iraola as one of the most proactive and entertaining coaches in Europe but perhaps he omitted the most important characteristic of the Basque coach: the speed of adaptation. If you analyze the first seasons of Iraola, the ability to adapt to different contexts and situations immediately catches the eye. After his first season in Cyprus, during which he played in the Europa League, he led second division team Mirandés to the semi-finals of the Copa del Rey, a result that earned him the call from Rayo Vallecano, looking for a coach to return in the Primera Division. Iraola finishes sixth in the regular season but gets promoted through the playoffs; the following season the real exploit arrives, with Rayo finishing twelfth and returning to the semifinals of the King’s Cup after a forty-year absence; in the season that has just ended he does even better, coming close to a European qualification only in the last few days.
Despite being a young coach, Iraola has shown great ability to adapt and know how to combine form with substance very well, given that these results have always arrived showing a proactive and offensive game that is also reflected in the statistics. Unlike Guardiola’s City or De Zerbi’s Brighton Rayo have never needed extended ball possession to dominate the pitch, as evidenced by their twelfth place among the teams with the most ball possession in the 2022/2023 Liga. On the other hand, Iraola manages to dominate the field with pressure and steals: his last Rayo was the third in all of La Liga with the PPDA – which indicates the consecutive passes granted to the opponent in each defensive action – lower, with 9.5 consecutive passes granted to the opponent, just 0.5 more than Barcelona, first in this ranking. However, the pressure brought by Rayo is not an end in itself, as it almost always generates a shot on goal: the red and white lead La Liga for shots born after a high recovery, that is, in the forty meters of the field closest to the opponent’s goal. Iraola has a very clear idea of what to do even when possession is the prerogative of his team.
Here too, differing from Guardiola or De Zerbi, who prefer a dense network of short passes, Iraola prefers to use the qualities of his Catena defenders above all, to reach the wingers with long balls – a statistical item dominated by Rayo in La Liga. Rayo are not a team obsessed with building from below and, moreover, they know how to move well even once they go back up the pitch, as evidenced by the fifth place in the standings for passes made in the last third.
What Iraola will find in England is diametrically opposed to what he left in Spain, given that in the four statistical items analyzed Bournemouth fluctuates between eighteenth and nineteenth place in the Premier League. Even if we analyze how the two teams occupy the field we find two completely opposite philosophies: the cherries they have full dominance only within their own area while Rayo – and Iraola – are very focused on contending for domination of the flanks, which in fact are controlled by Iraola’s team when they are not “neutral”.
When Iraola announced his farewell at the end of the season, his players immediately worked hard to underline the good things the Basque coach had done. Oscar Trejo in particular he told of Iraola’s attention to the individual improvement of his players and how the coach used to repeat that with work and ambition any goal in football could be achieved. The former Fiorentina mario suarez he went even further, declaring that he brought Rayo to where it always deserved to be. Iraola has left a good memory not only in his players but also in the fans, as evidenced by the words of Francisco Caro Garciapartner number 1 of Rayo, who crowned him as the best coach ever passed for Vallecas, spending words of praise not only in the football but also human sphere, giving him credit for having integrated very quickly into such a particular reality.
To outline what Iraola’s path to Bournemouth will be, we can refer to Trejo’s words that I mentioned a moment ago regarding the improvement of players. Iraola will have the task of enhancing the best elements of the Bournemouth squad, also adding players more congenial to his game and his ideas. Starting from the module, Iraola used the 4-2-3-1 in the last Liga and even when he changed approach he opted for a 4-4-2, designed by raising the attacking midfielder next to the striker.
The fundamental point of Iraola’s game is the midfield, especially the two players in front of the defence, who must have opposite but complementary characteristics. Here we understand why Iraola has almost always employed a defensive midfielder like Oscar Valentin – second in La Liga for tackles and twelfth for steals – next to a game creator like Santi Comesaña. In this portion of the field Bournemouth has weakened recently losing Jefferson Lerma in favor of Crystal Palace and therefore it is to be expected that investments will be made to please the new manager.
The same goes for the full-backs, a much-sought-after role in Iraola’s game, where a small revolution can be expected. Indeed, Smith to the right does not seem to have the necessary characteristics for playing Basque e vineyard is back in Rome, so the cherries will have to buy two new owners if they don’t want to clip the wings of Iraola’s creature. An interesting speech can be made for the former Sassuolo Junior Traore, who could take the place of Óscar Trejo, becoming the necessary fantasy for a square team like Bournemouth and pumping his numbers given the importance that Iraola gives to his second striker. In attack, on the other hand, Iraola has shown that he knows how to get by even without a twenty-goal centre-forward but preferring instead a more mobile and associative striker, a profile that perfectly reflects the characteristics of the former wonderkid Dominic Solanke.
Foley has made it clear that he is ambitious and wants to invest heavily in Bournemouth – he spent 55 million on the transfer market in January – and, consequently, that he is willing to please his new coach who seems to have finally made the leap towards big football. where it is destined to remain for many years.