AFC Bournemouth owner Bill Foley has revealed that AFC Bournemouth president of football operations Tiago Pinto has held talks with Andoni Iraola’s agent over the prospect of a new contract.
The Cherries head coach has been at Dean Court for less than two years and his current contract, signed 10 months ago, expires at the end of the 2025/26 campaign.
During his time on the south coast, he has been linked with interest from Barcelona, Real Madrid and Tottenham Hotspur.
Iraola has proved to be a very popular appointment at AFC Bournemouth, both with the Dean Court faithful and the media alike, despite a lukewarm reception from the national media at the time of Iraola’s announcement as the new head coach of the Cherries.
The national media were perplexed at the sacking of Gary O’Neil after guiding AFC Bournemouth to Premier League survival, the reaction from the Dean Court faithful was more mixed and open-minded due to the promise of more entertaining football under a new head coach.
With a poor run of results during the opening nine games of the season, the pressure mounted on Iraola. With those same people in the national media taking every opportunity to claim “I told you so”.
AFC Bournemouth owner Bill Foley, however, stood by his decision – People say you made a mistake sacking O’Neil for Iraola – That’s on me says Foley and from that point onwards, AFC Bournemouth’s form clicked into gear.
7 wins came from the next 9 Premier League outings and whilst a difficult run at the turn of the year saw just 3 points from the next 7 games, another run of 6 wins and just 2 defeats from the next 10 games saw the Cherries not only climb up the Premier League table, but also set a new club record for the highest points tally in the top flight of English football – 48 points.
In April, he was linked with Barcelona, when Barcelona Sporting Director Deco was quoted listing Andoni Iraola as “a top coach” alongside the likes of Luis Enrique, Pep Guardiola, Jurgen Klopp, Mikel Arteta and Sergio Conceicao.
This season, when many pondered if the Cherries might suffer a second season syndrome with “Iraolaball” being found out, all the Cherries have done is push on to another gear.
With 10 games of the 2024/25 season remaining, AFC Bournemouth are 9th, 4 points shy of their club record tally in the top flight of English football.
The Cherries find themselves ten points clear of the likes of Manchester United and Tottenham Hotspur and only 3 points adrift of fifth place which has the potential to be a UEFA Champions League qualification spot, with a number of club records looking set to be broken.
Talking to talkSPORT radio, Foley said…
“Tiago Pinto [sporting director] is talking to his agent and has been talking to Andoni and we are raising the topic.
“I hope that when I’m over in late April or Easter that I will have a chance to sit down with him and just talk to him about what his goals are and his aspirations.
“I know that our aspirations will equal his. He wants to do well, wants to build winning teams and we’re here to support him.
“In terms of the UK, Bournemouth is about as good as it gets in terms of a location. It’s a really great town, the people are wonderful so all that all that is yet to be revealed.
“He’s an excellent coach, a humble man but he is serious and he really is a great coach of our team, and he leads their team, so we’re definitely engaged in all these matters.
“The transfer window won’t be until July but we have a number of targets that we’re interested in to help support our own team.
“In fact, we have a half day meeting next week via Zoom to go through our team and see who we need to bring in how we need to supplement what we already have.
“We are doing really pretty well. We’re not one of these teams that’s under the gun for financial fair play. We’re in pretty good shape and we don’t have debt.
“We’re kind of self-funding ourselves so I am optimistic. We just have we have work to do.”
Your say…
bremen said…
Not too worried about spurs interest, it’d be Real Madrid that would be hard to turn down.
Still think we’ll miss out on Europe this year due to too many individual errors at both ends of the pitch and drawing too many games.
If Andoni Iraola does end up leaving, just have to hope that there are release clauses that make whatever team want him pay through the nose for him as well as a suitable replacement lined up. – To join the conversation, please click here.