Andoni Iraola's Ambitious Start at Liverpool
Andoni Iraola walks into Anfield with a grin that gives him away. This is not a man daunted by the scale of the job. This is a coach who has just dragged Bournemouth into Europe and now finds Liverpool, and a title race, dropped at his feet.
Iraola’s leap into the deep end
He did not need much persuading.
“I think you don't need a lot of things to get attracted by Liverpool,” he told the club’s website. “Liverpool is Liverpool.”
It sounded simple, almost obvious, but the list that followed showed exactly why he is here. The atmosphere. The supporters. The calibre of the squad. The chance to work with elite players and, crucially, “the chance to fight for titles”.
That is the line that will echo around Merseyside. Liverpool, a season removed from being crowned champions of England and fresh from finishing just above Iraola’s Bournemouth, are not dressing this up as a rebuild. They want to stay at the top. He wants to live there.
The timing is awkward and enticing all at once. Eleven Liverpool players are heading to the FIFA World Cup. Iraola will not have his full senior group for weeks, but he is already eyeing the gap that creates.
“The senior players that have played in the World Cup, they’ve been feeling the pressure, they’ve been playing for their countries, I think they need and deserve a rest,” he said.
That rest opens the door for others. Younger faces. Fringe names. Players returning from loans and development squads, all suddenly under the eye of a new head coach.
“This allows us to give also important minutes to train more closely with the young players that probably we don’t know as well,” he added. Those sessions, he believes, will be “very valuable” as he makes early decisions on who stays close and who drifts to the margins.
While the World Cup rolls on elsewhere, Iraola’s first Liverpool side will be taking shape in the shadows.
Diomande on the radar as Salah heir
One decision is looming larger than the rest: life after Mohamed Salah.
Liverpool are scouring the market for a new right winger, and Yan Diomande has surged towards the top of the list. The Athletic’s David Ornstein reports that the club have made contact with RB Leipzig over the 19-year-old, who has just completed a breakout season in Germany.
The numbers are startling for a teenager. Thirteen goals. Ten assists. Thirty-six games in all competitions. Champions League qualification secured. One hundred and eighteen successful dribbles – fifty more than any other player in the Bundesliga.
Those are not the statistics of a prospect quietly learning his trade. That is a winger tearing through defences and forcing Europe’s elite to take notice. Paris Saint-Germain and Manchester City are already circling.
If he does land at Anfield, it will feel like unfinished business with English football. Diomande has already bounced through trials at Chelsea, Crystal Palace and Bournemouth, and even spent time at Rangers in Scotland. None of those spells turned into a permanent deal. Instead, he found his first proper footing at Leganes, signing for the Spanish club in November 2024 and making just 10 LaLiga appearances before Leipzig moved.
“Everything went fast,” he reflected recently. It is hard to argue. At 19, he has already played at AFCON, helped his country qualify for the World Cup, and tasted Champions League football. Now, potentially, the Premier League beckons again – this time not as a hopeful trialist, but as a marquee signing and Salah’s successor.
For Iraola, a coach who thrives on vertical, aggressive football, Diomande would fit the brief. Direct, fearless, and already proven at a high level. The kind of winger who can turn a tight game on its head with a single run.
If Liverpool get this right, his first signing could define the next phase of their attack.
United double down on their transfer blueprint
Across the north-west, Manchester United are not promising fireworks. They are promising repetition.
Omar Berrada, the club’s chief executive, has made it clear: last summer’s template is the model. Copy it. Refine it. Do it again.
“I think the template for what we did last summer will be replicated,” he told the club’s Inside Carrington podcast.
United’s previous window quietly underpinned a third-place finish. Matheus Cunha, Bryan Mbeumo and Benjamin Sesko all reached double figures in league goals after arriving ahead of the 2025/26 campaign. Behind them, Senne Lammens impressed so much that he was named Barclays Transfer of the Season.
Those signings were not just about star power. They were about profile and planning. Berrada stressed the need for a clear idea of which positions require strengthening, while staying alert to the chaos of a summer market.
“There could be exits we’re not expecting, there could be opportunities in the market that perhaps weren’t there at the beginning of the window,” he said. United, he insisted, have to be “agile and flexible”, but the core strategy is fixed.
They want balance. Experience and youth. Players already proven in the Premier League and others shining abroad, ready to make the jump.
The approach is already visible. BBC Sport reported this week that United have agreed a £35 million deal with Atalanta for Brazil midfielder Ederson. A 25-year-old with European experience, entering his prime, and versatile enough to slot into different midfield structures – he fits the pattern.
United are not trying to win the summer on social media. They are trying to build a squad that can sustain a title push. The question now is whether steady, smart recruitment can close the gap on the very top.
Amad stuns France as World Cup looms
On the international stage, one of United’s own has just rattled a World Cup favourite.
France, loaded with talent and widely tipped to go all the way this summer, slipped to a surprise warm-up defeat against Ivory Coast – undone by a moment of sharp, clinical finishing from Amad.
Rayan Cherki, representing Manchester City, had put France ahead on the stroke of half-time with a brilliant strike that seemed to settle any early nerves. The script looked familiar: France control, France win, everyone nods and moves on.
Amad tore it up.
Introduced from the bench, he seized his chance late on, arrowing a first-time shot into the bottom corner in the 84th minute. It was the kind of goal that announces form and confidence in an instant – the sort that lingers in a coach’s mind when final squads and starting line-ups are drawn up.
This was no low-key friendly either. Premier League names were scattered across the pitch: Lucas Digne, Maxence Lacroix, Malo Gusto, Ibrahima Konate, Jean-Philippe Mateta, Ibrahim Sangare, Simon Adingra. Plenty of familiar faces, plenty of competitive edge.
“It’s a wake-up call, if we needed one,” France coach Didier Deschamps said afterwards. He refused to dramatise the loss, but he did not dismiss it either. For a side with expectations this high, even a nudge in June can matter.
Elsewhere, another Premier League striker found his range. Arsenal’s Viktor Gyokeres scored in Sweden’s 2-2 draw with Greece, curling in a free-kick early in the second half after Liverpool defender Kostas Tsimikas had opened the scoring. Leeds United’s Gabriel Gudmundsson, Brighton & Hove Albion’s Yasin Ayari and Liverpool’s Alexander Isak all started for Sweden, each staking a claim before the serious business begins.
From Iraola’s first steps at Anfield to Diomande’s next move, from United’s calculated rebuild to Amad’s statement strike, the threads are already forming. The season has not started, the World Cup has not kicked off, but the shape of what comes next is beginning to show.
