Why might Iraola trade in Bournemouth brilliance for Crystal Palace instead of Chelsea or Man Utd? | OneFootball

“I think I’ve supposed I prefer to make the mistake of maybe I could have stayed one year more,” said Andoni Iraola, “but I don’t want to make the mistake if it was one year too much and there is a small margin that you are playing with, and this is what it is.”

It was a refreshingly honest insight into the uncertainty surrounding an impossible decision few managers earn the right or opportunity to make. Most are either pushed before they can jump, or cash in on their stock in an almighty mid-season gamble.

Yet Iraola chose the path he knew best. After leaving both Mirandes and Rayo Vallecano upon the expiration of his contract with an extension offered but rejected each time, the Spaniard will complete a rare coaching career hat-trick at Bournemouth of honouring his commitment to a club and leaving with them on the rise.

After being sacked in his only other managerial post within seven months by AEK Larnaca, it feels as though Iraola has mastered the art of timing and climbing the ladder while burning no bridges.

He did not want “to risk the feeling I have right now of satisfaction of these three seasons” with Bournemouth. He was aware that “we as human beings, we get tired of always watching the same faces”.

Perhaps he sensed that, with Bournemouth 11th, out of both cup competitions early and below Sunderland and Everton when he announced his impending departure in April, a natural conclusion had been reached.

One month later, the Cherries are on a club record unbeaten run which has propelled them into a potential Champions League qualification place – depending on Aston Villa’s end to the season – with their first European campaign of any kind on the horizon.

If he has indeed made “the mistake of maybe I could have stayed one year more,” Iraola can find solace in the assuredness of avoiding “the mistake of it was one year too much”. Bournemouth have been brilliant but there is no guarantee that their stepping-stone recruitment philosophy will continue to thrive, especially with the addition of continental competition to the calendar.

But that only answers part of the question. It is possible to figure out why Iraola is leaving Bournemouth; it is less easy to understand why he might do so to join Crystal Palace.

That is not intended as a jab at the European final-reaching, FA Cup-winning, glass ceiling-smashing soaring Eagles. This is the greatest period in their history, an unprecedented stretch of trophy-adjacent excellence built on sustainable foundations.

Yet Iraola would indeed be ‘a major managerial coup’ – and what feels like a unique case of a team outside the traditional elite punching well above their weight with successive foreign coaching appointments.

For a club which has only ever replaced previous permanent non-British managers with Roy Hodgson, it represents quite the shift.

But it is a sideways step at best when Iraola was assumed to be leaving Bournemouth to scale the managerial heights. He is said to be ‘no longer under consideration’ for the Manchester United job but Newcastle, Athletic Bilbao, Real Madrid and Arsenal were thought to be among his options. There is still talk of interest from Chelsea. Those are not conversations in which Palace traditionally belong.

Perhaps his inclination towards a more stable environment at Selhurst Park can be explained by Iraola’s own thoughts on what he plans to be a shorter career on the touchline.

“I don’t see myself [working] for a long time, no,” he said in October 2023, a matter of months into his Bournemouth reign. “It’s a very personal thing. Balancing it with family life is complicated, especially when you have children. You can’t change places every two years.”

Those seven words essentially rule out basket cases like Manchester United, Chelsea and Real Madrid in one fell swoop; they would accept 16-game unbeaten runs, but probably not the 11-match winless sequence which preceded it at Bournemouth this season.

Iraola has overseen a similar level of streak in each of his three campaigns on the south coast. While the manager of Bournemouth – or Palace – can sustain them and maintain trust in The Process, it quickly engulfs those in charge at a bigger club with absurd expectations.

The ‘lucrative’ contract; the London life; the reported greater input on transfers; the offer of patience and support to keep building a wonderful CV without risking being sacked at the first sign of trouble. It does not add up to make Palace the obvious choice, and accusations of Iraola lacking ambition would be inevitable. But it does help illustrate why he might jump between modest, overachieving ships instead of trying to steer a tanker in permanently choppy waters.

Even if it might ultimately be a “mistake”, Iraola has earned faith in his judgement.